Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/406

Rh Dismal Swamp. I shall answer them one by one, and the answer in each case shall not be an opinion, but a demonstration.

In the month of May, 1888, two sunburned white men in cedar canoes turned at right angles from the broad water of the Dismal Swamp Canal, and entered the dark and narrow channel, called the Feeder, that pierces the very heart of the swamp, and supplies the great canal with water from Lake Drummond, or the "Lake of the Dismal Swamp." The men in the canoes were Mr. Edward A. Moseley and the writer of this article.

These were almost the first canoes, except the "white canoe" of the poet, that ever paddled on the breast of the dusky lake since the disappearance of the Indian hunters a century ago. The only boats known to the lake are the long, rude "dugouts," of the negroes, and the flat-bottomed dories or punts, of the farmers along the east side of the canal.

While we were in the main canal we found the banks high, especially on the western side, where the diggings and dredgings of the channel have been heaped for a century. On this side, behind the bank, lay the unbroken leagues of swamp, crowded with dense timber and canebrake jungle, the surface of the land or mire being considerably