Over on the southern side of Chesapeake Bay is the Elizabeth River, in
reality a tidal arm of the sea, curving around from the south to the
east, and having Norfolk on its northern bank and Portsmouth opposite.
The country round about is flat and low-lying, and far up the river
are Gosport and the Navy Yard, the largest possessed by the United
States. There are probably sixty thousand population in the three
towns. The immediate surroundings are good land and mostly market
gardens, but to the southward spreads the great Dismal Swamp, covering
about sixteen hundred square miles, intersected by various canals, and
yielding cypress, juniper and other timber. It is partly drained by
the Nansemond River, on which, at the edge of the swamp, is the little
town of Suffolk, whence the Jericho Run Canal leads into Lake
Drummond, a body of water covering eighteen square miles and
twenty-one feet above tidewater. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has woven
much of the romance of this weird fastness and swamp into her tale of
_Dred_. The Dismal Swamp Canal, twenty-two miles long, and recently
enlarged and deepened, passes through it from Elizabeth River to the
Pasquotank River of North Carolina, and the Albemarle Canal also
connects with Currituck Sound. This big swamp was first explored by
Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, in 1728, when he surveyed the
boundary between Virginia and North Carolina.
All about the Norfolk wharves are cotton bales, much timber, tobacco
and naval stores, and immense quantities of food and garden products,
not forgetting a profusion of "goobers," all awaiting shipment, for
this, next to Savannah, is the greatest export port for food and other
supplies on the Southern Atlantic. The "goober," or peanut, is the
special crop of this part of Virginia and Carolina. The cotton
compresses do a lively business in the cotton season, the powerful
hydraulic pressure squeezing the bale to barely one-fourth its former
size, and binding it firmly with iron bands, thus giving the steamers
increased cargo. In the spring the shipment North of early fruits and
vegetables is enormous, vast surfaces being devoted to their growth,
the strawberry beds especially covering many acres. The oyster trade
is also large. The settlement of Norfolk began in 1680, and in 1736 it
was made a borough. Portsmouth was established later, but the starting
of the navy yard there, which has become so extensive, gave it great
impetus. Portsmouth claims that in the Civil War, in proportion to
size, it sent more soldiers to the Southern armies and had more dead
than any other city. The capacious naval hospital and its fine grove
of trees front Portsmouth towards the harbor. Norfolk has St. Paul's
Church, founded in 1730, as its chief Revolutionary relic--an ancient
building, with an old graveyard, and having in its steeple the
indentation made by a cannon-shot, when a British fleet in 1776
bombarded and partly burnt the town. An old-fashioned round ball rests
in the orifice; not, however, the one originally sent there by the
cannoneers. Relic-hunters visiting the place have a habit of
clandestinely appropriating the cannon-ball, so the sexton, with an
eye to business, has some on hand ready to put into the cavity, and
thus maintain the old church's patriotic reputation. A novel sight in
Norfolk is its market, largely served by negroes--old "mammies" with
bright bandannas tied about their heads and guarding piles of luscious
fruits; funny little pickaninnies who execute all manner of athletic
gyrations for stray pennies, queer old market wagons, profusions of
flowers, and such a collection of the good things of life, all set in
a picture so attractive that the sight is long remembered.