Weekly Chemawa American., January 13, 1911, Image 5

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Weekly Cbemawa American
VOL. 13___________________ JA N U A R Y
T h e Real D ism al
S w am p .
If Tom Moore had not visited the
U nited S tates in 1804 and, a t Norfolk,
\ a., w ritten his fatuous poem about the
Dismal Swamp, th a t charm ing, easily
accessible and other-w orldly relic of the
prim eval w ilderness—a bit of wildest
n atu re a t the doors of New York, P h il­
adelphia or W ashington-w ould probably
not bear so dark a reputation. I d o n ’t
thin k Mrs. M owe’s Dred alone would
have tired my boyish im agination with
this dream . No, it was Tom Moore’s
poem, learned by h eart, with its weird
and potent sp e ll:
But oft from the Indian h u n te r’s cam p
The maid and her lover to tru e
Are seen at the hour of m idnight dam p
To cross the lake by a firefly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe.
I have w ritten th a t stanza from mem
ory; I h av en ’t seen the poem for 20
years, but I'll wager it’s right to a syl­
lable
1 k n e w s w .m p s in my boyhood,
tolerably wet and tolerably gloomy
The Dismal Swam p was my delicious
nightm re of the com posite wetness and
gio.mi (»1 all those dark corners of our
New E ngland woods. I longed to vi-it
it, to creep th ro u g h its tangle to t h e
13,
1911
________
NO. 27
w’eird and lonely lake where the lover
“ hollowed a boat of the birchen b ark ,”
and to see, perhaps, th a t strange a p ­
parition, or a t the very least, a fugitive
slave pursued by bloodhounds.
W ell, I have been to the Dismal
Sw am p at least and camped on the shore
of its lake. I saw no ap p arition in “a
boat of the birchen b ark .”
Indeed,
th ere being no birches in the swamp,
the chances of it were som ew hat d im ­
inished in advance.
Less fortunate
th a n ‘‘Porte C rayon,” the A m erican
m agazine illu strato r who went into the
sw am p with his sketch book in 1856, I
saw no gigantic negro peering w arily
through the reeds, with a finger on the
trigger of his rifle. I did not even see
any water, outside of the lake and the
canals. A lthough it was early May
when my com panion and I entered the
swam p, and the Spring of 1910 was not
a dry one, we could walk dry shod every­
where th a t we attem pted it.
There were no mosquitoes nor yellow
Hies to annoy u -so early in the season.
We saw i o snakes. The air was warm
and balm y b y day, cool and soft by night.
In: um erable birds «ang in the w ilderness
about us. The prevalent northw est wind
'( o n tin u fd on page 8.)