"There is some peaty land in the swamp," said Mr. Wallace, "and I don't know that it could be reduced to cultivation; but there are hundreds of miles of land as good as this I have reclaimed."
"Would the land burn if it were drained, as some people say?" I asked Captain Wallace, whose reclaimed land runs within a few miles of the lake.
"No," he answered, smiling at the question; "why doesn't our Dover Farm (which lies west of the canal) burn if that be true? The whole surface of the swamp becomes dry enough to burn in the summer months; but it does not burn; at least it burns no more than any other closely timbered country."
Another objection offered is that the drainage of the swamp would produce malaria.
Shame on the pretence! The people who are responsible for the swamp have not been able to make it malarial in a hundred years of treatment inductive to malaria. They have drowned it, and rotted it, and cut away its purifying juniper wood, and still it remains the healthiest portion of the State of Virginia, if not of the United States.
If I were sick to-morrow of malaria contracted on some New England river, I should go at once to the Dismal Swamp to be cured. Depend on it,
