CANOEING IN THE DISMAL SWAMP
The Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina is one of the celebrated features of the American continent. Its name is almost as familiar as Niagara or the Rocky Mountains. Its limits are not easily defined, no careful survey or good map of the region having ever been made. It lies in two States, on the Virginia side in the counties of Nansemond and Princess Anne, and on the North Carolina side in the counties of Gates, Pasquotank, Camden, and Currituck. Almost in the centre lies Lake Drummond, or "the Lake of the Dismal Swamp," which is seven miles by five in extent, according to local records, but three miles by two and a half by our measurement. The area of the swamp is between eight hundred and one thousand square miles. Its reputation is that of a morass of forbidden and appalling gloom, a region impenetrable to the search of student or hunter; the fecund bed of fever and malaria, infested with
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