Having already passed twice through the Dismal Swamp Canal, and would have steamed through it the third time had I not been too late for the boat that was destroyed, but I was destined to pass through it still again on my passage home. Lossing, in his history of the American Revolution, in volume I, page 311, gives a very complete description of the Dismal Swamp, through which this canal passes. He says:
"Schemes for internal improvements, for facilitating the development of the resources of the country, often occupied Washington's most serious attention. At the time we are considering, he was engaged, with some other enterprising gentlemen, in a project to drain the Dismal Swamp, an immense morass lying partly in Virginia and partly in North Carolina, and extending thirty miles from north to south, and ten miles from east to west. Within its dark bosom, and nowhere appearing above its surface, are the sources of five navigable rivers and several creeks; and in its centre is a body of water known as Drummond's lake, so named from its alleged discoverer. A great portion of the morass is covered with tall cypresses, cedars, hemlocks, and junipers, draped with long mosses, and covered with creeping vines. In many places it is made impassable by fallen trees, thick brakes, and a dense growth of shrubbery. Thomas Moore, who visited it in 1804, has well indicated its character in the following stanzas of his legendary poem, called 'The Lake of the Dismal Swamp:'
"'Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds—
His path was rugged and sore;
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before!
"'And when on earth he sank to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,
THe lay where the deadly vine doth weep