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362 delightful summer outing, and stop this, "damnable iteration" of the sufferings and wrongs of the Dismal Swamp. The swamp cannot grieve at whatever infamy may be put upon it. What does it care, or who does care whether the wonderful lake be ringed with silver sand or hedged with bleached roots and twisting serpents? "But the pity of it, Iago! Oh, Iago, the pity of it!"

Go back again to Norfolk with me, and try to forget that you have been inside the gates of this brown-water canal of the Dismal Swamp. It was not fair to begin my tale in the middle. Surely I have made a mistake and told the story of the swamp too soon. But I have only told the story; it remains for me yet to prove it.

It is seven o'clock in the morning, and we two are in the market of Norfolk buying bacon, salt pork, hard bread, cheese, a ham, an alcohol stove, and all the necessaries for a few weeks' sojourn in the wilderness.

At eight o'clock, breakfast over, we are getting into rough suits in the office of Gen. Groner, of the Merchants' and Miners' Transportation Company, whose courtesy we shall remember with pleasure.

At ten o'clock we are on board a tug, kindly placed at our disposal by Mr. R. B. Cook, the