OKEFINOKEE SWAMP 613 



cypress the most imjjortant timber is the pine on the islands, but there 

 is still so much of the same outside of the swamp that this compara- 

 tively inaccessible supply has not yet been drawn upon for lumber or 

 turpentine. For the various hardwood species which inhabit the swamp 

 there has been as yet almost no demand, and even in the easily acces- 

 sible small swamps in the surrounding pine-barrens they have scarcely 

 been touched. 



The vast quantities of peat in the swamp will doubtless be useful 

 for fuel at some future time, when coal and wood become considerably 

 scarcer than they are now. Capt. Jackson had some of the swamp 

 muck analyzed and found 85 per cent, of it combustible. 



Doubtless the most absorbing economic question with regard to 

 Okefinokee Swamp is whether it will be feasible to drain it. The 

 popular demand for indiscriminate drainage of swamps will apparently 

 never be satisfied as long as Okefinokee continues to exist. The argu- 

 ments against swamp drainage in general, set forth in a recent article/^ 

 need not be repeated here, but a few points which apply to this swamp 

 in particular deserve to be mentioned. 



As the swamp is about 100 feet higher than the St. Mary's Elver at 

 the other end of the six-mile drainage ditch, it would seem a compara- 

 tively simple matter to empty it that way, until it is recalled that the 

 surface of the swamp slopes slightly in the other direction, and most 

 of the water discharges into the Suwannee River. Col. Hunter esti- 

 mated in 1857 that the swamp could be drained for $1,067,250, but 

 Capt. Jackson, soon after the dredging operations of the Suwanee Canal 

 Company began, expressed tlie opinion that to drain the swamp 

 thoroughly would require over 300 miles of canals, besides a consider- 

 able deepening of the drainage ditch, which is already about 100 feet 

 wide at the top of the ridge. 



It was expected that the swamp muck when drained would make a 

 soil of surpassing richness, but experiments made with it where it was 

 thrown up on the banks of the canal gave only negative results. This 

 might have been anticipated from the nature of the surrounding 

 countr}^, which is completely covered with quartz sand, so that the few 

 streams emptying into the swamp carry practically no mineral matter. 

 The sour humus of the swamp might perhaps be dug out and used to 

 advantage on strongly calcareous soils, but there are no such soils 

 within a convenient distance. 



A sudden draining of the swamp would be disastrous in several 

 ways. In the first place, it would kill the fish and other aquatic 

 animals, and would probably be detrimental to the health of the sur- 

 rounding country in other ways. Then it would put an end to the 

 production of cypress timber, for which the swamp seems to be best 



^'^ Southern Woodlands, 2: 46-67, August, 1908. See also Science, N. S., 

 28: 525, October 16, 190S; Literary Digest, 37: 890, December 12, 1908. 



