Dismal Swamp

Dismal Swamp may refer to:

  • The Great Dismal Swamp near Virginia and North Carolina, US
  • The Dismal Swamp in New Jersey, US
  • The Dismal Swamp in Tasmania, Australia

Famous quotes containing the words dismal and/or swamp:

    To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things—but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by thousands; a houseless rejected creature.
    Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

    We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)