TALE OF THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP.

BY

Elizabeth

Mrs. HARRIET BEECHER) STOWE,

AUTHOR OF "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN."

"Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,—
His path was rugged and sore,

Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen, where the serpent feeds,

And man never trod before.

And, when on the earth he sunk to sleep,

If slumber his eyelids knew,

He lay where the deadly vine doth weep

Its venomous tears, that nightly steep

The flesh with blistering dew."

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

BOSTON:

PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY.

1856.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED BY
HOBART & ROBBINS,

KEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDERT,

BOSTON.

12-5-30

2 v.

PREFACE.

THE writer of this book has chosen, once more, a subject from the scenes and incidents of the slaveholding states.

The reason for such a choice is two-fold. First, in a merely artistic point of view, there is no ground, ancient or modern, whose vivid lights, gloomy shadows, and grotesque groupings, afford to the novelist so wide a scope for the exercise of his powers. In the near vicinity of modern civilization of the most matter-offact kind, exist institutions which carry us back to the twilight of the feudal ages, with all their exciting pos sibilities of incident. Two nations, the types of two exactly opposite styles of existence, are here struggling; and from the intermingling of these two a third race has arisen, and the three are interlocked in wild and singular relations, that evolve every possible combination of romance.

Hence, if the writer's only object had been the production of a work of art, she would have felt justified in not turning aside from that mine whose inexhaustible stores have but begun to be developed.

But this object, however legitimate, was not the only nor the highest one. It is the moral bearings of the subject involved which have had the chief influence in its selection.

The issues presented by the great conflict between liberty and slavery do not grow less important from year to year. On the contrary, their interest increases with every step in the development of the national career. Never has there been a crisis in the history of this nation so momentous as the present. If ever a