never blocked up by ice. It has the double advantage of an inner and an outer harbour. The inner harbour is as smooth as any mill-pond. In it vessels lie with perfect security, where every imaginable facility is offered for loading and unloading." * * * "The back country, which without portage is naturally tributary to Norfolk, not only surpasses that which is tributary to New York in mildness of climate, in fertility of soil, and variety of production, but in geographical extent by many square miles. The proportion being as three to one in favour of the Virginia port." * * * "The natural advantages, then, in relation to the sea or the back country, are superior, beyond comparison, to those of New York."
There is little, if any exaggeration in this estimate; yet, if
a deadly, enervating pestilence had always raged here, this
Norfolk could not be a more miserable, sorry little seaport
town than it is. It was not possible to prevent the existence
of some agency here for the transhipment of goods, and for
supplying the needs of vessels, compelled by exterior circumstances
to take refuge in the harbour. Beyond this bare
supply of a necessitous demand, and what results from the
adjoining naval rendezvous of the nation, there is nothing.
Jan. 18th.—The "Great Dismal Swamp," together with the smaller "Dismals" (for so the term is used here), of the same character, along the North Carolina coast, have hitherto been of considerable commercial importance as furnishing a large amount of lumber, and especially of shingles for our Northern use, as well as for exportation. The district from which this commerce proceeds is all a vast quagmire, the soil being entirely composed of decayed vegetable fibre, saturated and surcharged with water; yielding or quaking on the surface to the tread of a man, and a large part of it, during most of the year, half inundated with standing pools. It is divided by creeks and water-veins, and in the centre is a pond six miles long and three broad, the shores of which, strange to, say, are at a higher elevation above the sea, than any other part of the swamp, and yet are of the same miry consistency. The Great Dismal is about thirty miles long and ten miles wide, on an average; its area about 200,000
