Evening Star Newspaper, January 12, 1930, Page 77

PART -SEVE he Sunday Star Magasine __Wf\gliier(}'l"ON. B. .C.,. SUNDAY, , JANUARY 12, -194 Features BIG GAME In Nearby VIRGINIA The Bark of Deer and Bear Hounds Rings in “Dismal Swamp” Near Norfolk, Finest National Game Rreserve on the Atlantic Seaboard, W here Hunters From All Parts of the Country Are Flocking in Increasing Numbers to Bag Rich Rewards of Sport r HE Great Dismal Swamp, in ante-bellum days har- bor of refuge for hun- dreds upon hundreds of fleeing slaves seeking es- cape in its tangled solitudes from baying bloodhounds hot upon their trail, rings today with the staccato bark of deer and bear hounds as sportsmen from all sections of the country trail these aristocrats of the wild in what is probably the finest natural game preserve on the Atlantic Seaboard. Year by year, as wild life gradu- ally disappears in other sections of the country, the fame of the Dis- mal Swamp game trails is spread- ing until now its half-a-million acres are dotted in more than a score of places by hunting lodges, where, with the opening of the hunting season, huntsmen from far and near foregather with gun and dog to join in a sport that for sheer thrill can hardly be sur- passed anywhere in the United States. The gunning this season has been unusually good. Harry Levey, wealthy New York sportsman, who bhas a hunting lodge on the shore of Lake Drummond, in the center of the great swamp, recently bag- ged five deer and four bears in two weeks of hunting. “It's the best hunting I've had fn more than 10 years,” Mr. Levey said. “I've hunted in practically every section of the United States and for real thrills and something worth while to burn powder at, I'll take the Great Dismal Swamp every time.” ' In addition to the bear and deer, Mr. Levey and his party during their stay in the swamp shot more than 100 partridges, half this many wild geese and five wild turkeys. HE Great Dismal Swamp lies :™" between Norfolk, Va., and Eliz- abeth City, N. C. Roughly, it is an oblong 30 miles long and 20 to 25 miles wide, embracing 700 square miles of virgin wilderness, whose fnnermost depths have never been penetrated by man. About half of the swamp lies in Virginia and the remainder in North -Carolina. Al- most as an arrow through its cen- ter is the Lake Drummond Canal or the Washington Ditch, a historic waterway, dating back to the early years of the Nation. The canal is paralleled all the way by the George Washington highway, a hard-surfaced road, so named be- cause of the interest manifested by the Father of His Country in the first proposals to cut a canal through the wilderness to connect Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay, on the north, with North Carolina’s broad sounds and rivers on the south. A bit of the fanciful legendry associated with the Great Dismal Swamp was woven into verse by Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, during a visit to Norfolk in the early years of the last cen- tury. It tells of a beautiful Indian maiden, who pined away and dled, as was the fashion of maidens in the “good old days,” after her lover had met an untimely fate in the great swamp, and is entitled, “The Lake of the Dismal Swamp.” Its most famous lines follow: They made her a grave too cold and damp For a soul so warm and true; And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Where all night long by a firefly lamp, She paddles her white canoe. N its towering gum and cypress trees, grace- fully festooned in gray Spanish moss, and in the dank depths of its scum-covered bogs, the Great Dismal Swamp today is little differ- ent from the morass of Moore's time, except that it is greatly reduced in area. Originally it comprised approximately 2,100 square miles, being nearly double the area of Rhode Island, but gradual reclamation through drainage sys- tems has reduced it to a third of its original size. Curiously enough, the Great Dismal Swamp is much higher than the surrounding dry lands. Federal topographical surveys have disclosed that it is from 10 to 22 feet above tidewater, and that in effect it is a huge spongelike basin, defying complete drainage unless undertaken on a scale calling for the expenditure of mil- lons of dollars. Despite the stupendous cost, there are many who predict that the entire By W. E. Debnam. wilderness, with its depth of rich, black soil, some day will become one of the richest farming regions in the world. The presence of high sandy ridges along the western border of the Great Dismal Swamp, coupled with the unusual charac‘er of the morass itself and the finding of tree trunks buried 50 feet beneath its surface, has given rise to a fantastic theory of its origin, first ad- vanced by Dr. J. D. Hathaway of Elizabeth City, for many years a student of the topography and history of the region. Dr. Hathaway links the Great Dismal Swamp with the legendary account of the lost At- lantis, a great continent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, supposedly swallowed up in perhaps the most terrific catastrophe in the history of the world. At that time, he holds, the shore of the Atlantic was what is now the western border of “the swamp, and as the lost continent sank beneath the waves, a great tidal wave cast incalculable quantities of debris along its shores. For years and years, he be- lieves, the sea continued to toss trove from the sunken Atlantis upon the:coast there and gradually built up what is now the great swamp. In that connection this investigator calls at- tention to the Indian legends of a great flood and to the ancient Greek and Egyptian ac- counts of the Atlantean catastrophe. Geologists of Columbia University, who for several years have made annual pilgrirrages to the Dismal Swamp to study its mysterious formation, state that in years to come it will be one of the greatest coal-producing areas in the world. There is no need, however, for the reader to reach for his check book to start making investments in Dismal Swamp real estate in the hope that he can later retire upon a fortune made in coal. It will take some two million years, the scientists say, before Old Mother Earth has completed the alchemy which is turning the morass into a coal mine. Ten cents put out on compound interest would yield quicker millions than ten thousand times this amount invested in the “coal fields” of the Dismal Swamp. THE “Hiawatha” of Dismal Swamp is D. Cortez Temple, a resident of Newland Township Pasquotank County, N. C., and the mightiest bear hunter of them all. Mr. Temple is a square-built, grim-visaged fellow whose lithe activity belies his 52 years and whose sternness of chin and mouth is lightened by a twinkle of the eye that betrays a keen se¢nse of humor. This veteran huntsman has been tracking bears since the age of 12, seldom bagginyg less than a dozen in a season, which runs from October 1 to January 31, and with a record of 36 for his best year. He modestly estimates his total bag at something over 200 bears, but other bear hunters in the neighborhood, in- fluenced by no such inhibitions, place the num- ber at not less than 400 and probably con- siderably more. Mr. Temple, too, is the authority forthe statement that, all his fame as a mighty hunter to the contrary, Col. William Mitchell of separate Air Corps fame, is a mighty poor shot. During the early part of the present season, it seems, the colonel, it for a Dbit of D. Cortez Temple, famous bear hunter of Dismal Swamp, with his pack of bear hounds. bear shooting in the swamp, ene gaged the services of Mr. Temple as a guide. On two separate and distinct oc- casions, Mr. Temple says, “I drove bears right across his path, so close that he could have reached out and almost touched them with the end of his gun. Two times be blazed away—and both times they were clean misses.” The party bagged two bears on this occasion, but neither of them were brought down by Col. Mitchell, Mr. Temple says. “The fellow that does the hard- est hunting gets the most bears” is his quaint way of explaining his anusual success in the hunt. “And,” he added, “good dogs are worth a lot. I don’t use any but pure-bred hounds. They're the best when it comes to following a cold trail.” Mr. Temple is scornful on the subject of the ferocity of bears. “They're no more dangerous than rabbits,” he says. “Give one half a chance and he’ll run from you every time. Of course, if you pen one up in a corner he might hurt you, but he'd rather run than fight any time. I've never had a bear to try to hurt me but once, and I'm not sure he was after me that time.” Pressed for details, this worthy namesake of a mighty Spanish conquistador related that, as a boy, his father had allowed him to guide a visiting evangelist on a bear hunt. The gentleman of the cloth had given him a number of shells that looked all right, but didn't prove quite up to expecta- tions. In due course they came upon a bear. The youngster slipped up close and blazed away point blank. Instead of departing this life in the manner expected of him, the bear grunted angrily and made a lunge toward the young sportsman. Desperately the boy fired again and again, flecing all the while, but still the bear came on, none the worse for wear. Finally, his gift shells exhausted and the bear almost upon him, young Mr. Temple fumbled at his hip pocket and found one of his own trusty shells. Reloading in headlong flight, he turned suddenly and blazed away full into the bear's face. The animal fell dead, his head almost entirely blown off. The evangelist, who had been a terrified spectator of the ineffectiveness of the first. shot, didn't stop running until he regained the Temple farmhouse, the narrator recalled with a smile. Each year this veteran tracker of bears guides visiting huntsmen on forays into the swamp and each year inexperienced bear hunters add color to his growing store of whimsical hunting stories. He tells, with keen appreciative humor of a boastful fellow who was a m m- ber of a party from the North and who offered to give up his shirt if he failed to bag a bear, provided, of course, opportunity was afforded for a reasonable shot. It happened that Mr. Temple and his pack of hounds took the trail of a bear close to a little logging railroad that ran through that part of the swamp. The chesty hunter was on the railroad and the tracker skillfully maneuv- ered the fugitive bear so that the creature passed directly by him. “One time he was on one end of a crosstie and the bear on the other,” Mr. Temple related with a grin. “He shot four or five times and never hit the bzar at all. Finally the bear got tired of the foolish- ness and ambled on off. When we got back to camp the hunter sneaked around to me when the others weren’t looking and gave me a nice sweater, saying he hoped it would take the place of the shirt. It did.” In the Summertime, when the roasting ears in the cornfields skirting the Dismal Swamp have attained milky fulsomeness and sweetness, the bears execute such persistent raids that the indignant farmers mount guard at nightfall upon their ficlds to take stern retaliatory measures. But bear and deer are not the only “game"” that haunt the deep fastnesses of the great Dismal Swamp. In thess Volstedian days, when a thirsty world awaits with open pursz to pay liberally for “roastin’-ear wine,” senterprising manufacturers of the contraband have found the swamp an ideal “factory site.” The num- ber of these opcrators may be guessed at from the fact that 107 “stills” were destroyed by Federal agents in the Dismal Swamp during the past year alone.