The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1903-05-16
IN THE DISMAL SWAMI.


IN THE DISMAL SWAMP.
Within twenty miles of one of the
largest and most energetic of the
Southern cities of the coast, and on
the border lands of two of the oldest
Southern States, there lies district
some two or three hundred square
miles in extent, but little better known
at this day than it was $50 years ago
when George Washington himself
laid out route through its wilder
ness. The name alone, "The Dis
NAL Swamp" is a by-word every
where, and legend has grown up
around it of dreary, boggy, un-
known region of snakes and dark
damp thickets, swarming with mos
quitoes, malaria and owls, where run
away slaves fled for refuge, to lead
an existence scarcely less miserable
than that from which they had es-
capped.
The swamp is old historically. The
first settlers at Norfolk knew of it as
a wild, impossible bit of country full
of game and of valuable timber cy-
press, so good for making shingles I;
juniper, black gum and beech. In
1928, Colonel Byrd, while endeavor-
in to establish the boundary between
Virginia and North Carolina, ran
survey across it working with the
greatest difficulty and only making
mile day through the thick growth.
He named it then "The Dismal
Swamp"
X X X X X
The center of the swamp, and the
most attractive part of it, is a pond
called Lake Drummond. 1t is three
miles long and two wide, with an
average depth of ten feet, though both
size and depth vary considerably with
tbs phasdP aSsadsr Er9R " bbd8 lake fgdiaatts6 iat6
the wilderness.
These water pathways were the re-
suit of an attempt to exploit the
riches of the swamp. Long before
the revolution men began to cut the
cypress and juniper that grew to such
astonishing height and girth in the
rich, wet soil. The difficulty was
not to find trees but, as they began
cutting farther and farther in from
the solid land on the edges of the
marshy country, to get the logs out
to the settlement. The swamp luck
lily gave natural means of transpor-
tation through the water in its soil.
If shovelful of earth is taken up the
hole left fills instantly with water.
So the early woodsmen dug shallow
canals, three or four feet deep and
ten or twelve wide. They called
these waterways bitches, and foated
out their logs along them. George
Washington laid out one of the canals
that leads in six or eight miles from
the edge of the swamp to Lake Drum
mond, and is still called the Wash
ington Ditch, and still used as one of
the best approaches to the lake.
There are many other bitches cut
through the swamp. The "Jerico, "
that leads in from the town of Suffolk
to the lake, the white Oak Spring, "
tn" Heron and the Feeder Ditch. "
This last has been raised to the dig
nifty of a canal and equipped with
locks at each end and acts as pass
age and feeder from Lake Drummond
to the main Dismal Swamp canal,
which gets its water supply from the
lake. The Dismal Swamp canal it.
self is a serious modern work of pres
ent utility, cutting across the eastern
edge of the swamp and furnishing
water route from Norfolk to Pamlicc
Sound, via Elizabeth City and the
Pasquotank river, and it has been the
subjuct of many Government surveys
and many violent discussions, as one
of the best inland water routes from
Norfolk to the South. 1t is by this
canal that the easiest approach to the
swamp can be made at present if
launches, and on it is carried all the
trade and business travel that still
filters through this wilderness. Mod
ern dredges rattle and bang along the
big canal all the year, keeping i
deep and passable, and truck boat:
from the country bordering the swamp
are poled or towed slowly through tC
the docks of Norfolk, paying tol
for the right of way.
1t is in the spring that the festiva
time comes to the swamp. There il
a comfortable stable camp near th'
shore of Lake Drummond, where th'
Ierico and Washington bitches NEE
and flow together for few hundred
feet before they join the lake. The
I bitches pass by beneath the camp!
veranda, and some fifty yards ava,
between the trunks of the cypres
and the gum trees the lake show
placid and quiet. When the sprins
is far enough along for the wild hon
eysuckle and jasmine and the arbutu
vines to be hanging in deliciou
masses over the sides of the ditche
and reaching down to the red browl
water, of color so clear and warn
and sunny, companies of people com
from the villages lying around tn
borders of the swamp. Twenty 0
thirty young people at time, wit
some slight camping outfit, embarl
on large, fat-bottomed dugouts tina
draw but little water, and then ar