Terms, Five Dollars a Year. | 

 Ten Cents a Copy. j 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY. JANUARY 13, 1876. 



i Volume 5, Number 23. 



1 17 Chatham St. (City Hall feqr.) 



For Forest and Stream. 

 MY VISITOR. 



WHILE lost in thought one sunny morn, 

 A thing of perfect beauty born, 

 Into my room was sent — 

 A humming bird with taper win^s 

 Bedashed with tints of ancient kings, 

 And to and fro it went. 



WhUe bronze-like colors decked its head, 

 From dark blue-brown to almost red, 



With iridescent hue, 

 Its eyes with flashing radiance shone, 

 Chatoyant like some sparkling stone, 



And thrilled me through and through. 



The window closed, it could not pass- 

 It buzzed and buzzed against the glass 

 And beat its crested head: 

 But soon Its mellow hum did cease 

 With anxious look for quick release- 

 Alas, my bird was dead I 



A constant humming was its tune, 

 It sung May out and sung in June— 



A song for every flower: 

 But now it sings a spirit's Bong, 

 A song that's sung the Ages long 



And constant as the hour. 



T. D. I. 



For Forest and Stream. 



r M M^wnl ^jjwmnp. 



"Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds, 



His path was rugged and sore, 

 Through tangled juniper beds of weeds, 

 And many a fen where the serpent breeds, 

 And man never trod before . " 



THERE are but few people in this country who have 

 not heard of the great Dismal Swainp of Virginia, 

 and in their mind's eye have not pictured an immense 

 section of land composed of quagmires, quicksands, mo- 

 rass, and bogs, all commingled together, and forming an im- 

 passable swamp, into whose depths the foot of man has 

 never trod. This is the general impression, but it is en- 

 tirely an erroneous one. There is much to see in the 

 Dismal, much of varied loveliness and picturesque beauty, 

 and nowhere on this continent is there a region that will 

 interest, amuse, and instruct the tourist, and give more 

 satisfaction to the sportsman, than this great swamp. 



To those who like every varying scene, and who love to 

 see nature in all her aspects, they will be satisfied in their 

 explorations there. It is so different from the mountains, 

 valleys, and seashore, so unlike any other place they ever 

 sawbefore, so weird, strangely solemn, s® utterly still 

 and silent, that it inspires the traveler with a nameless 

 awe, and an intense fascination. The immense cypress 

 trees, with bare trunks and interlacing boughs, stand like 

 pillars supporting a fretted dome in some vast cathred'ral, 

 and the dim aisles stretch away off all around you and 

 powerfully excite the imagination. One can stand and 

 imagine himself in Avernus, condemned to wander through 

 a vast unpeopled shade all alone, with no voice to break 

 the horrible solitude; doomed to be seeking some object 

 sentient with life, but never finding it; followed by grim 

 remorse wherever he fled, ever by his side, and never leav- 

 ing him, except when his crime was expiated. De Quincey, 

 in his confession of an "Opium Eater," draws just such a 

 picture. lie believed that he had committed such a great 

 sin that even the crocodiles shuddered when they heard it; 

 and he dreamed that he was hunted by Bramah, the Hindoo 

 god through the forest, the jungles, and swamps of the 

 Indies, but finding no rest. In fancy, I could behold the 

 crouching figure of the cowering wretch hiding behind 

 the tree trunks, and fleeing in dim recessses of the forests. 



The Dismal Swamp lies in two States; one section 

 lies in Virginia, and is twenty-five miles in length, run- 

 ning from east to west; the other part lies in North 

 Carolina, and is twenty miles long, and stretches in 

 a southward direction, but its width is much contracted. 

 Its aiea is some eight hundred square miles. The "whole 



of the Dismal is one vast morass, with little islands scat- 

 tered here and there of solid ground. The earth is spongy 

 and soft, and consists of vegetation and matted roots, 

 forming but a treacherous foo thold. It would be natural 

 to suppose that the swamp was lower than the surrounding 

 land, but this is not so; and singular as it may seem, the 

 greater portion of this vast morass stands higher than the 

 ground that surrounds it, some seven or eight feet higher 

 than its banks, as was ascertained by careful measurement 

 when the railroad was cut through. Another most singu- 

 lar of singular facts in connection with the fascinating 

 spot is, that the water flows from and not into it, there 

 being five rivers that draw their source of supplies from 

 the Dismal— the South Branch of the Elizabeth, the South 

 Branch of the Nansemond, the North and Northwest 

 Rivers, and the Pergamond. Of these, the two first flow 

 into Virginia, and the three latter into North Carolina. 

 Follow all these livers to their heads and they will be lost 

 in the great Dismal, there being no signs of them above 

 ground. This vast amount of water is sucked up by the 

 spongy soil that retains it, and furnishes a never failing i 

 flow to these rivers. The extreme richness of the soil 

 causes a prodigious amount of luxuriant vegetation and 

 aquatic plants to spring up. There are a thousand dif- 

 ferent varieties, from the diminutive shrub up to the gi- 

 gantic cypress. Much to my surprise, I found the tem- 

 perature of the swamp very cold; it must be, I imagine, 

 due to the constant evaporation of the moist soil, and also 

 to the trees keeping out the sun, and forming by their in- 

 terwoven branches a never ending shade. Be that as it 

 may, the air feels as if you were at the bottom of an ice- 

 house, except when you get into the weeds where there is 

 no shade, and then, on a sultry summer day, if there is 

 any place hotter this side of Hades, I have never felt it. 



To those who imagine they have made their way through 

 thick cover in their hunting excursions, whether through 

 the laurel brakes of the mountains, or the weeds and briers 

 of a salt water bog, I commend to them a short trip in the 

 Dismal, and you can w*i£er your pet breech loader against 

 an old flint-lock musket that they will acknowledge they 

 never saw a road so hard to travel before. In the first 

 place the ground, though it supports for a time your 

 weight, has really no foundation. You may take a pole 

 ten feet long and shove it down into the treacherous soil out 

 of sight without using your strength. And there are many 

 large tracts that have no trees whatever, and in their stead 

 are immense patches of reeds; this is a hard place to get 

 through; the reeds are often ten to fifteen feet high, and 

 as thick as a cornstalk, and grow so close together that you 

 cannot thrust your arm through them. They spring up as 

 thick together as the fingers upon your hand, and the briers 

 entangle your feet and wind around your legs so that you 

 cannot extricate yourself, and can only struggle furiously 

 and tie yourself tighter, until you give up the undertaking 

 in despair. Some of the aquatic plants are of rare beauty 

 and exquisitely colored, and by their vivid tints light up 

 the otherwise dreary region in some places; but, on the 

 whole, it may be called a horrible desert solitude, the very 

 "abomination of desolation"— a spot that his "Infernal 

 Majesty" must covet in his "Plutonic Realm," and he was 

 well pleased, for it gave him a hint for improving the 

 prisons of Hell. In some sections of the great Dismal 

 there is no living thing to be seen, not even a bird; and 

 even the buzzards avoid circling over this Avernus, as the 

 exhalations taint the very air. Yes! I often used to think 

 I saw Satan sauntering among the everglades, and strolling 

 in his favorite earthly resort. 



"From his brimstone bed, at break of day, 



A walking the devil is gone. 



To the Dismal Swamp he wends his way, 



To see how subjects gets on." 



The great swamp used to be a famous place for bears in 

 the old days when the canal was first built. The trapper 

 who accompanied the workmen kept them amply supplied 

 with bear's meat, without ever going out of the path. An 

 old journal of one of the surveyors, speaking of the game 

 he saw, says: "The like of wild game was never seen 

 before; the numbers of nocturnal animals, such as coons 



/ 



and opossums almost surpass belief, and bears are seen in 

 abundance every day, and they are so tame that our trap- 

 per has stopped shooting, because the whole party has 

 sickened of bear-meat." There are still many bears in. 

 the Dismal, but they are very shy and wary, and keep con- 

 cealed in the fastness and the impenetrable jungles. Dogs 

 are generally afraid of them, and wont attack them. The 

 most common way of hunting them is to listen intently 

 near midnight, and when you hear a scuffling noise and the 

 sound cf breaking limbs, you know that the bear is climb- 

 ing a tree and seeking his favorite meal of acorns. Going 

 to the spot and camping, and keeping guard for the night, 

 Monsieur le Bruin is found comfortably squatting on the 

 forks of a tree. The next morning, and at the break of 

 day a long tube is leveled in his direction, a gleaming eye 

 glances along the barrel, a sharp crack, a heavy thud, and 

 all is over. Wild cats also used to be abundant, but I 

 have met nobody who has shot one lately, though the 

 workmen all say they have seen them. By far the most 

 interesting and beautiful part of the great Dismal is Luke 

 Drummond. It is like an oasis in the desert, a beauti- 

 ful 4 island in the ocean, a very jewel in the Slough of Des- 

 pond. As I said before, nobody for a long time ever 

 penetrated the swamp, and it was as late as the Revolution- 

 ary war that a hunter named Drummond first discovered 

 this lake. It seems he went hunting one day, and, allured 

 by the wounding of a bear, he followed the trail far in 

 the interior, until he had hopelessly lost his way. He was 

 the first white man whose footsteps ever trod this unknown 

 land, and he must have been terribly frightened, tor tra- 

 dition, rumor, and superstition had made this swamp a 

 veritable enchanted land, within whose realms dwelt war- 

 locks, witches, and goblins, and such uncanny beings. 

 There were talcs told, too, of vast wild animals of surpassing- 

 strength and fierceness, the like of which mortal eyes 

 never saw before. The whole place was peopled by only 

 an immortal race. One cannot help fancying his feeling's 

 during his three day's wandering, his constant action, and 

 incessant struggles, and at last a helpless despair at ever 

 getting out of the labyrinth, and then his ecstacy and delight 

 when he at last discovered the lake, placid in its beauty, 

 and gleaming like gold in the sunlight. Lake Drummond 

 is a splendid sheet of water, and is oval in shape. It is 

 seven miles long and four miles wide. There is no beach 

 whatever, the forest growing clear up to its boundaries. 

 The water looks black, but when examined in a glass it is 

 the color of light wine. It is tinted and tinctured by ju- 

 niper and gum leaves, and other decaying vegetable matter. 

 This water is considered a fine medicinal drink; and inva- 

 lids aiflicted with pulmonary diseases have ottea been so 

 benefitted by it as to remain several months in the vicinity 

 where they would have daily access to its health-giving 

 waters. Another peculiarity is, that it keeps pure for a* 

 great length of time, and is often used by ships going on a 

 long voyage, who have their water casks filled from Lake 

 Drummond. A popular delusion was that this lake had 

 no bottom, but Commodore Barron, of the U. S. Navy 

 once sounded it, and the greatest depth in the middle was 

 only fifteen feet, the average being ten feet. The bottom is 

 generally composed of mud, but sometimes of pure white 

 sand. The lake had always in my boyhood been a fabled 

 land; to me Moore's beautiful ballad had ever made me 

 long to see it, and as I stood on the brink it looked like 

 an enchanted realm. The setting sun rested lovingly on 

 its surface, tinting its dark waters to a rich golden wine- 

 like hue, casting the reflection of the majestic cypress on 

 its mirror -like breast, while its borders fringed with the 

 brilliant and varied colors of the myrtle, the laurel, and 

 the yellow jasmine, made the whole scene one of sur- 

 passing loviness, and the rich odor of the jasmine made, 

 the balmy air redolent with its voluptuous perfume Aa 

 the sun sank slowly to rest, and the "shadows increased 

 and the warmth died out of the lake, I could swear that 

 phantom boats came and went, and the tradition of the 

 two Indian lovers returned forcibly to my memory and 

 along the banks, under shadow of the trees, I could behold 

 the canoe paddled by the two lovers come and go; and in 

 Uncyl could see the dark _ejesioUbe'i«.' : 



