The Dumol Swornp Conol rode» carries luiuriom yocHts do«n the coost.
VII — A rrificial out Id from the navi¬
gation of the sounds through the
Dismal Swamp canal.
Besides the passage through Ocra-
cokc inlet, now reduced to six feet
draft of vessels — and the long Core
sound to Beaufort, through which only
vessels of four feet draft can pass
the only other and safest and best
outlet for the great commerce of the
sounds is through the Dismal Swamp
canal — though this affords passage
to vessels of but five feet draft. This
canal is twenty-two miles in length,
as excavated, and empties at its north¬
ern end into Deep Creek, a branch of
Elizabeth River, and at its south end.
into the upper part (where deep, but
very narrow and crooked,) of the Pas¬
quotank river, which discharges into
Albemarle sound. Norfolk and Ports-
mouth in Virginia, and Elizabeth City
in North Carolina, are the nearest
towns on these different waters, thus
connected by this artificial navigation.
The much greater length of the canal
passes through the Dismal Swamp —
and its water is supplied (at the sum¬
mit level.) by a small canal, from Lake
Drummond, in the central part of the
great Dismal Swamp.
The canal, from its northern sec¬
tion. descends by locks of sixteen feet,
into the water of Deep Creek, which
was generally navigable, but some¬
times was deficient of the required
depth. In latter years, to avoid the
occasional detention of vessels by
low tides in Deep Creek, the upper
water of that stream has been raised
by a dam. with a lock emptying be¬
low. where the tide water is always
deep enough.
The present raised surface of Deep
Creek, (which may now be considered
as an extension of the canal.) and
which is five feet above low tide mark,
is eleven feet below the surface of the
northern level of the canal, which ex¬
tends nine and a-half miles to the
middle and summit-level. The water
of this middle section is but four and
a half feet higher than that of the
adjoining northern section. From the
summit level (nine miles long.) the
canal descends by a lock of seven and
а
feet, to the south level of three
miles long, and from that, by thirteen
feet lockage to the upper navigable
water of Pasquotank river. The as¬
cending lockage from Elizabeth river
(low tide-water) to the summit level,
is twenty-one and a-half feet — and
the descending, to Pasquotank, twenty
and a-half feet. The whole length of
the canal, within the outer locks,
amounts to twenty-four and one-fourth
miles. It would at first strike every
observer that it was a great error of
construction, as it is certainly a perma-
Any time you feel indispensable,
take a walk through the cemetery and
read the headstones. Those guys were
pretty hot stuff, too. — Public Service
Magazine.
The Great
Dismal
Canal
An I860 traveler tells
«
lull at j»l> it was to <lig
this ancient waterway.
By FiniliMI RUFFIN
NOTE:
ТЫ»
h .noth.r cWrxt from ft* book
"MMcbt*
Ы
l-.-r Carotin*.’’ t>uMI*h«d In l**0.
nent and great addition to the diffi¬
culty and cost of navigation, that this
middle section was not sunk four and
a-half feet deeper, so as to dispense
with twice that amount of lockage, at
least, if not further to have level water
from one end to the other of the ex¬
cavated portion of the canal. It had
been at first designed to thus sink the
middle section. But the labor of ex¬
cavating through a close and deep mat
of living juniper stumps and roots, and
the still lower stumps and roots and
prostrate trunks of junipers of older
growth, remaining unrotted beneath
the earth — and the excavation to be
made in the softest of mire, or un¬
der water — presented difficulties so
enormous, that it was preferred to raise
the level of the canal by embank¬
ments, and with two additional locks,
to the present summit level. There arc
seven locks in all. The summit level
of the canal is supplied with water
from Lake Drummond, by a feeder
of three miles in length, having three
feet fall from the water of the lake
to that of the summit level of the
canal. Thus the height of the surface
of lake Drummond above Elizabeth
river at ordinary’ low water, is equal
to twenty-four and a-half feet.
THE STATE. May IB. 1957
11
