to supply his mill. He keeps in the swamp probably one hundred men or more, in different gangs, cutting juniper and cypress, which they drag by mules over the "gum roads" to the lake, whence it is lightered through the Feeder to the Dismal Swamp Canal, and by this means carried to the saw-mill at Deep Creek. The colored workers in the juniper groves of the swamp are its only inhabitants; they are called "swampers." Let me here explain that Lake Drummond is the centre of the swamp's organism, acting precisely like a heart. Except the Dismal Swamp Canal, which runs along the border, all the roads, canals, and ditches that pierce the swamp, radiate from the lake like spokes from a hub.
The swamp has only one natural feature—the lake. All the rest is simply swamp. The canals and roads are accidents.
Whoever would know the Dismal Swamp must study it from the lake, not from the exterior. This is the reason that even those living in its neighborhood know so little about it. Their knowledge is local, not constitutional.
A "gum road" is a road formed by trunks of trees about eight feet long, laid close together, and bearing two rude wooden rails. On these run low mule wagons or trucks, loaded with logs
