Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/522

Rh effects on the Thomas Newton to return on our tracks along the whole course of the Dismal Swamp Canal.

The Dismal Swamp could be drained and reclaimed, and a property of very large value would be added to the States of Virginia and North Carolina. While in process of reclamation, and perhaps afterward, the present canals could be retained to get out the timber, which is enormously valuable; but the locks making the central or higher level could be abolished. This would lower the canal and the lake about seven feet. It would be comparatively inexpensive to dredge this level down to the outer levels.

A fall of seven feet in the lake would reduce it perhaps half a mile, leaving all round it a beach of white sand of exquisite fineness. This would at once purify it from the water snakes that make its banks hideous.

The surrounding swamp would drain into the lake, the Feeder and the canals, leaving their banks dry. A road could easily be made on one side, and a clearing on the other, along all these canals, sweeping away moccasins and other water reptiles.

The reduction of the water could be made profitable to the owners in another way. The city of Norfolk needs a water supply, and here is the