Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/444

Rh There was no chance harmony here, it was nature's own decoration. He saw himself in no mirror, except the mirror of the canal. He knew how to dress better than any belle in Boston or New York. The wave of his large hand as he said "good-by" was as kindly and as eloquent as if he stood in a lion-skin cloak on the banks of the Niger, a chief among his own.

We could not help thinking as we left him that this man at least was properly placed in the Dismal Swamp, where he was as free as were his fathers in Africa. Like scales from our eyes began to fall the impressions of "Dred," and all the other dismal stories we had read and heard about the Dismal Swamp. Every day of our stay on the lake this conviction grew upon us; the slaves who escaped to the Dismal Swamp in the old time must have lived happily in their absolute freedom. The negro in the swamp is at home. He has helped to spread and exaggerate the terrors of the place to keep it more securely for himself. If I were a slave, in slave time, and could get to the Dismal Swamp, I should ask no pity from any one.

But all this time we kept laboriously paddling against the strong current, for the lock ahead, only a quarter of a mile from the lake, was this day letting pass an unusual volume of water. Every