The Great Dismal Swamp, Part Deux: The Swamping

As I was saying...if you are curious about the History of the GREAT DISMAL, read on. But I must worn you, is not for the faint of heart!

No one is sure what (or whom) made the giant black water swamp. "Non-pseudoscientists," AKA "scientists," claim that the Dismal was created the continental shelf last shifted, thousands upon thousands of years ago, the true scholar knows that the Earth is only 6012 years old and that this "continental shelf" business cannot possibly be accurate.

Also under dispute is the genesis of Lake Drummond, the evil lake at the black heart of the swamp. (I mean, a swamp with a giant lake in it! Really!) Some claim that this murky pond was the result of a "peat burn" around four thousand years ago. But we all know that no Irish lived in America until the nineteenth century, when they pirated boats to invade our country with three specific goals: monopolize our menial jobs, steal our American potatoes, and fight in our Civil War.

The United States' constant friends, the Native Americans, have an even less convincing theory. They believe that a Firebird created the lake. Even if they aren't talking about the late, great Pontiac muscle car, friend of those weird guys that graduate high school and keep hanging around the parking lot, I can't really see how a bird made of flames could create a watery lake.

At any rate, the lake was not discovered until Englishman and non-Indian white guy William Drummond stumbled across it in 1665. Since the Native Americans living around the lake for "13,000" years hadn't noticed it, I don't think they have much room to theorize about its creation.

But let us move on. I promised to tell you about the sex-crazed colonial gentleman whose history is intertwined with the Dismal. Well, here he is:

Fancy, no? This dandy is none other than William Byrd II, of Westover Plantation, Virginia. Byrd led a surveying expedition of the border between North Carolina and the Old Dominion in 1728. He writes about the Dismal in his account of the trip, entitled The History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, a title whose brevity is not appreciated by modern, non-eighteenth-century readers. Byrd and his party felt that the GDS was completely devoid of life. Their definition of "life" obviously did not include: mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and Native Americans. But maybe he was too busy thinking about groping his serving wenches and flourishing Mrs. Byrd on the billiard table to notice. It happens.

Then there's the George Washington Ditch, perhaps our country's greatest tribute to the Founding Father most dedicated to ruining nature.

In 1763, Washington, after personally negotiating a peace to the long war between the French and Indians, started the Dismal Swamp Land Company, Ltd.. A venture capitalist, GW used the elite team of trained beavers that he kept at his Mt. Vernon home and his giant axe (see above) to harvest hundreds of acres of virgin timber which he used, in part, to craft numerous sets of wooden teeth.

1867 map of the Dismal Swamp Canal

Our next tale involves Harriet Beecher-Stowe, the crazed author who, according to Abraham Lincoln, personally started the Civil War from her uncle's Connecticut cabin.


After inciting the entire nation with her first novel, HBS decided to write a book about fugitive slaves hiding out in the horrible Great Dismal. Although a great author, she was not a good speller, and Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856) captured neither the essence of the awful feeling Stowe felt when she first gazed upon the GDS nor the reading audience that Uncle Tom's Cabin enjoyed.

An escaped slave in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1856, from Harper's.

The final chapter in our tale brings us up to today. Although a great deal of what remains of the Swamp is now protected by the government, much of the adjacent land is owned by Erik Prince and his private miliatry company Blackwater Worldwide. Prince is descended from German royalty who fled to the area after Napoleon's abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 to become the Electors of the Great Dismal. 

These shadow rulers presided over a meager realm of escaped slaves, Native Americans, and Lutherans. Although they lost their sovereignty during the "roaring"1920s, the family, now called "Prince," retained its land holdings through the Great Depression. Erik, the family's heir, has made it his personal mission to restore his family's principality, setting up an elite private military operation in 1997. His special ops forces, unsightly creatures captured from the darkest interior of the swamp, coerce local landowners to sell their acreage for way more than it's worth with bags of money given to them by the U.S. government.


So, the greatest threat to the Dismal today is not deforestation through beaver armies, angry Indians, or bad writing by suicidal poets -- it is a disinherited German prince's army of Swamp Creatures! Now that's irony (Alanis-style)!

Well, I hope that you have been inspired by these tales of America's Favorite Interstate Tidewater Swamp. Until next time, the Curiosity Cabinet is closed.

The Great Dismal Swamp, Part One

Several days ago, a rambling gentleman, a hobo, a tramp, a vagrant, a highwayman, a knight of the road, if you will, knocked on the door to my domicile. Always curious to learn news of the world, and generally amiable to homeless gentlemen, I opened my round door to him and invited him in for a peanut butter sandwich, according to the customs of his people.

After we sat for several hours in silence, the grizzled veteran of the hobo jungles eating his "sandwich" and the Distinguished Academician puzzling over this peculiar specimen of Americana, the bum, whom I shall call "Viscount Molesworth" (for obvious reasons), suddenly engaged me in a dialogue. Although it was difficult to comprehend his speech, what I took to be a pidgin of Okie slang, English, and Volapuk, I made out that he had recently been to the "great swamp" where, he claimed, "the criks (sic) run black" and a lake existed that was higher in elevation than the swamp surrounding it.
At first I dismissed these ramblings as the fever dream of a consumptive, but I then recalled an unlabeled jar of black water I had purchased from at an estate sale for Lesley Frost Ballantine, the daughter of poet and wall-building curmudgeon Robert Frost. The jar was advertised as having been a souvenir of a trip Frost took in his youth to the Great Dismal Swamp, a great malaria-ridden watery mystery on the border of North Carolina and Virginia after a feud with his high school sweetheart. I thought I even remembered a movie they made about Frost and the eccentric locals he met there:


Excited by this, and fed up with staring at the hobo and trying to deduce his painfully inflected sentences, I kicked said wanderer to the curb and investigated this strange natural phenomenon that attracted Tom Joads and adolescent literati alike. What I learned probably will not surprise you, especially if you are knowledgeable about Denture-Owning Founding Fathers, Colonial American Sex Addicts, Deciduous Conifers, Nineteenth-Century Women Abolitionist Novelists, and Enigmatic Private Military Companies. You are, you said? Well, I'm going to tell you about the GDS anyway.....in the next installment of the Curiosity Cabinet!

The Jerusalem Artichoke: Or, the Poor Man's Sunflower

Let us consider the humble Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus). I have recently added a new sample of this mysterious plant to my collection. Sulking in the shadow of its noble cousin the Sun Flower, the J. A. nevertheless is a plant of Merit, producing an edible root. Indeed, the plant is not even poisonous like its starchy great uncle the potato. 

Table tubers.

The J. A. was brought to the attention of Europeans as part of the Columbian Exchange. Wondrous new things were brought to the Old World, such as cocaine, coffee, and syphilis. The New World received mirrors, smallpox blankets, flat globes, and Europeans. A symbiotic swap if there ever was one!

Anyway, back to the Jerusalem Artichoke. How did it get its name, you might ask? (You probably wouldn't, hypothetically, but let's proceed with this thought experiment.) Although some "botantists," like that BabyBjorn wearing know-it-all Loren Rieseberg, might tell you that "Jerusalem" is a folk etymology, derived from the Italian world for sun flower, girasole, they would be wrong. As wrong as wearing a BabyBjorn in public.

Knowledgable Pseudobotanists, like myself, know that it is called Jerusalem because it was originally discovered by the Nephites, specifically their leader, Nephi, when they arrived in the New World in 589 BCE. Nephi named the plant after his hometown, because radiance of its brilliant yellow flowers reminded him of the gilded ark so familiar from the Temple. As for artichoke, well, it was just a PR move. Everyone knows that adding a super-trendy moniker really spiffs up a dismal product--Just ask Eric the Red. Nephi's Jerusalem Artichoke plantations didn't work out, though, probably, as the The Pearl of Great Price speculates, because he had Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). And he started selling pearls for exorbant amounts of sheckles instead.

Claude Monet, 1880.

But what uses does it have, you ask? You can eat it, make liquor out of it, use it for fuel, and it makes a great doorstop. Some even believe it has healing powers, perhaps because of the J-town connection. Its most important role, though, is as a plant in garden catalogues, serving its useful purpose as something Pretentious Gardeners can order and use to impress their friends.

Well, that is about all for the "King of Neglected Tubers," the Jerusalem Artichoke. Join me next time, as I share further knowledge from the Curiosity Cabinet. In the meantime, I will be sitting by the fireplace, waiting for my ravens to return as I burn my collection of Magic Eye desk calenders.

Welcome to the Cabinet!

Hwaet!

I bid all welcome my humble "Blogge" post on subjects of a diverse, interesting, and (indeed) wondrous nature. My curiosity cabinet is a virtual room, not unlike those of old, exhibiting, for the willing participant, an encyclopedic collection of knowledge both tangible and intangible. This shall include, will not be limited to, history, natural sciences, and antiquities. Also, alchemy, astrology, pseudoscience ("real science" in the Greek), and matters of a metaphysical or speculative nature. And also some stuff that might be made up.

But a little about your humble author. I am a Distinguished Academician at an Institution of Higher Learning. From my panopticon at the top of my ivory tower, I send out my ravens to gather the news of the world each day. Although these birds cost me my depth perception, I cherish the TOTAL UNIVERSAL WISDOM they have allowed me to accumulate. And I read some books, too, I guess.

I will liken my cabinet of curiosities, or Wunderkammer ("Wonder Camera") in Deutsch ("German"), to a memory theater, a microcosm of the world, a Naturwissenschaftwundermicrokosmosgedächtnistheaterneugierkabinett, if you will.

Let us begin!

The Prof

Post-script: Make sure to follow my links if you desire to know more about a topic. That is, if you trust other sources on the Internet. Soon these links will not be necessary, however, because I hope to make this Cabinet a sort of Intra-net 'cyclopedia of a self-referential nature.

*     *     *

While you wait patiently for my next post from the Cabinet, 

enjoy these photos of my sanctum sanctorum:

Welcome to Professor Carmichael's Cabinet of Curiosites

Hwaet!

I bid all welcome my humble "Blogge" post on subjects of a diverse, interesting, and (indeed) wondrous nature. My curiosity cabinet is a virtual room, not unlike those of old, exhibiting, for the willing participant, an encyclopedic collection of knowledge both tangible and intangible. This shall include, will not be limited to, history, natural sciences, and antiquities. Also, alchemy, astrology, pseudoscience ("real science" in Greek), and matters of a metaphysical or speculative nature. And also some stuff that might be made up.


But a little about your humble author. I am a Distinguished Academician at an Institution of Higher Learning. From my panopticon at the top of my ivory tower, I send out my ravens to gather the news of the world each day. Although these birds cost me my depth perception, I cherish the COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE they have allowed me to accumulate. And I read some books, too, I guess.


I will liken my cabinet of curiosities, or Wunderkammer ("Wonder Camera") in Deutsch ("German"), to a memory theater, a microcosm of the world, a Naturwissenschaftwundermicrokosmosgedächtnistheaterneugierkabinett, if you will.


Let us begin!

Prof. Carmichael

Post-script: Make sure to follow my links if you desire to know more about a topic. That is, if you trust other sources on the Internet. Soon these links will not be necessary, however, because I hope to make this Cabinet a sort of Intra-net 'cyclopedia of a self-referential nature.