Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/442

Rh "Canoes."

"Kunnues! nebbah heahd 'bout dem befoah."

We remarked that he looked in good condition, and asked him was the swamp a wholesome place.

"Yes," he said. He had worked on the lake for seven years. He had come there from South Carolina, sick with chills, to be cured in the swamp.

"Do people come here to be cured?"

"Oh, yes, sah! Dismal Swamp's de healthiest place in all de worl'. Dere's nothing like junipa watah to cu' de chills."

"Do you like the swamp?"

"Yes, sah! I like de swamp. I wouldn't wuk nowheres else. I could get moh wages by going out to wuk on de high land. I get twenty dollars a month heah; could get thirty dollars out on de bank, but I like to wuk in de old Dismal best of any."

This was free testimony, and we heard it repeated scores of times by "swampers" before we left the lake. Interesting in this respect and others was Ned Boat, a very old colored man, who has lived in the swamp altogether for seventy-four years. He has never been sick. He is now employed by Mr. Roper as a counter of logs and marker of time, and earns forty dollars a month. He says the swamp water will cure almost every disease.