Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/467

410 and drank of it. Then, hope and strength returned. He took his bearings by the sun and succeeded in reaching his home that night, with the almost inconceivable tidings of a great lake in the centre of the Dismal Swamp.

George Washington, in 1763, in his twenty-first year, made a complete survey of the Dismal Swamp, with profound results. Throughout his life the secrets of nature he had there discovered were never forgotten; and years afterward, when the Revolutionary War was over, and he was "the father of his country," he purchased the swamp, and organized the Dismal Swamp Land Company, which still exists and continues its ownership.

Washington's original design was not the mere cutting of timber, but the entire reclamation of the swamp. He had perceived the immediate possibility of bringing almost its entire area into cultivation. His great project failed in this its first purpose not because it was impracticable, but because the company found that the timber-cutting alone yielded an unexpected and almost incredible revenue. The reclamation of the land was gradually given up, and as it was found that by holding and raising the water the timber could be more easily taken out, the locks began their work of still further drowning the whole district. Then came the