 The Cavalcade of America, starring William Holden and Brenda Marshall, sponsored by the DuPont Company, makers of better things for better living through chemistry. In tonight's DuPont play, The Firefly Lamp, we present two outstanding Hollywood stars, William Holden and Brenda Marshall. Miss Marshall will appear as Othelia Butler, and here to open our DuPont play is William Holden as Wilma Holm. I'd like to tell you what happens when a down-to-earth construction engineer, that's me, gets himself tied up with a swamp, a ghost and a pretty girl. The swamp? Well, that's the great Dismalant. The ghost? Well, it's supposed to haunt the great Dismalant. And as for the girl, well, that would be Othelia Butler, never prettier than that afternoon in April 1853, when I sat with her on the porch of her Richmond home. But all from the Indian Hunters' camp, this lover and maid so true, are seen at the hour of midnight dance, to cross the lake by a firefly lamp, and paddle their white canoe. Oh, isn't it a beautiful poem, Will? Oh, it's all right for a poem. It's called The Lake of the Dismal Swamp. Thomas Moore wrote it. And just who is Thomas Moore? A very famous Irish poet. And Irishman? Writing that kind of melancholy, hocus-pocus? I don't believe it. Oh, sometimes you make me so mad. I'm an engineer. The world for me, Miss Butler, is measured in three dimensions. And I don't go chasing after ghost-carrying firefly lamps like that fellow in the poem. When I've got to get from one place to another, I find me a road. And if there's no road to be found, I build me one. Ah, and someday, Wilma Hone, you'll find the world isn't always like that. But there's some things you can't fill roads over and bridges across. Strange things. More wonderful and mysterious than people dare think about. Don't believe it. Well, it's true. What do you know about the Great Dismal Swamp? It's right at our doorstep, yet no one dares to go near it. And those that do, what happens to them? How many times have you heard of people disappearing into it and never being seen again? A swamp is a swamp. Nothing but a piece of lowland badly in need of drainage. And what's so mysterious about the Great Dismal, anyway? About 100 years ago, George Washington had it surveyed from corner to corner. He even started a build a canal through it. Oh, well... Now listen to me, Miss Othelia. Do you intend for me to spend my visit discussing our mutual affection or this blasted Dismal Swamp? Mutual affection? You're taking very much for granted. I am not. You are, sir. I say I am not. And I say that you are. Yeah, yeah, what is all this? Hello, Father. Dr. Butler, how are you, sir? At the moment, Mr. Mahoney, a trifle annoyed. I was in my study, hoping to find a few moments of quiet for my mid-afternoon nap. May I ask you, sir, to court Othelia with a little less noise? I don't mind losing my daughter. But I do mind losing my sleep. Othelia, will you excuse us please? I want to talk with William. Of course, sir. I'll see you later, darling. But without that book of poems, remember? Oh, of course, darling. Anything you say. I wonder if she means it. My mature opinion is that she doesn't. Sit down, my boy. Thank you, sir. William, the time has arrived for me to act out the part of the serious parent. A role I find the trifle musty and very annoying. But it can't be helped. Now, you and Othelia have been engaged now for over 16 months. That's a long time. Yes, it is. All right. When the devil, you're going to get married. Oh, very soon. Very soon, sir. I hope, sir, you know the situation. My position now as the chief engineer of the Fredericksburg and Valley Plank Road is high in title and mighty low in salary. And besides, I see no future in building Plank roads. It isn't wooden roads this country needs, but iron rails. Not wagons and ox carts, but steam locomotives. That's the future for us. I'll agree to that. And I can't take the responsibility of family on until I can afford to maintain a family with some degree of comfort and security. A very unique point of view in these times, I must say. It won't be too long. You have some further prospects? That's one of the reasons I'm here in Richmond now, sir. It's two years since the General Assembly incorporated the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad Company. Nothing's been done so far. But I understand that construction is due to start fairly soon. So have heard. Chief engineer on the job will be a mighty fine thing. Twenty five hundred dollars a year. Oh, yes, sir. And there's a meeting of the board of directors at Dr. Mallory's house this afternoon. I've asked for an appointment. I'm going in for that job and I'm coming out with it. All right, Mr. Mahon, come in, please. Thank you. Sorry, I had to wait so long. Oh, that's all right, Dr. Mallory. Mr. Camp, Mr. Leonard, members of our board of directors. Rare pleasure to meet you, General. How do, sir? Now then, suppose we get down to business. Mr. Mahon, I understand you're familiar with the country between Norfolk and Petersburg. Yes, sir. Like a muskrat knows his creek. You have any ideas as to the best route our railroad should follow? Yes, I do. Well, let's hear them. Yes, sir. Well, may I use this map of Virginia you have here on the wall? By me. And borrow this ruler for a moment? You go right ahead. Now, between Norfolk and Petersburg, there's only one town the railroad has to hit. And that's Suffolk, right here. 20 miles southwest of Norfolk and 56 miles southeast of Petersburg. Actually, what we have is two sides of a triangle. Petersburg at one end, Suffolk at the angle, and Norfolk at the other end on the bay. Now, here's your route, as I build it. One end of the ruler on Petersburg and the other on Suffolk. That's it. You've gone a straight line between Petersburg and Suffolk. That's right, Mr. Camp, a straight line, still the shortest distance between two points. Yes, but what about the route from Suffolk to Norfolk? Here it is. Another straight line. Another one, that's right. But that's impossible, of course. Why, Mr. Camp, do you say it's impossible? Well, that route would take you right through the Great Dismal Swamp. That's right, sir. If you can't do that, you've got to swing around it. What do you figure your construction costs at, Dr. Mallory? Roughly $11,000 a mile. Swinging around the Great Dismal will add at least five miles to your route. $55,000. That's a lot of money. Yes, it is. I'll save it for you, every cent of it. It's impossible. There's no solid ground to work on. A railroad can't run on swamp mud. And where would you get the workers to go into the swamp? Fire, places interested with snakes and wild animals, and other things I'd rather not talk about. Ghosts? You can't laugh at something that people have been believing in for years, Mr. Mallory. Look, Mr. Camp, gentlemen, I'm not afraid of the Great Dismal Swamp or anything in it. I'll get together a crew of workers that'll be so tough they'll out scare any ghost within 50 miles of it. Not around the Great Dismal, but through it. Snack dab through its dirty, brown heart. That's the way I'd build. One moment, Mr. Mahon. Gentlemen, I'd like to speak to you. Yes, sir. Mr. Mahon, Mr. Camp, Mr. Leonard agree with me. We'd like you to accept the post of Chief Engineer for the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad. You mean, and I build the way I want to build? The way you want to build. Through the Great Dismal? As you said, Mr. Mahon, smack dab through its dirty, brown heart. Othelia. Othelia! I've got it, darling. I got the job. Oh, how when? Come out on the porch. I've got to tell you all about it, everything. She's got to sleep upstairs. Chief Engineer, $2,500 a year. It's all set. Oh, it's wonderful. How did you do it? With a ruler and a straight line. A line that runs smack through the Great Dismal swamp. Oh. We'll get married right away. I'm taking a surveying gang through the swamp next month. And you come along with me, too. It'll be a wonderful honeymoon. A honeymoon? In the Great Dismal? But why not? I don't know. It's just that I- Go on down there. Oh, Father, we've got the job. He's been made Chief Engineer of the Railroad. Good. Glad to hear it. And I'm going to marry your daughter. Fine. When? As soon as possible, with your permission, sir. Well, if you want my permission, the two of you best be moving off the porch. If I don't get some rest, I'll be walking down the aisle of the church in my sleep. Here it is, Attila, the Great Dismal. Oh, I'm still afraid of it, Will. Afraid of it? What's there to be afraid of? I don't know. The silence of it out here in the canoe. The way the shadows hang between the trees and the dead stillness of the water. Now, it's just a swamp. And it won't be so silent very long, and I'll prove it. My construction gang's coming west from Norfolk and east from Suffolk. We'll be cutting and sawing their way through in a couple of weeks now. And we'll wake it up. Listen. That sounds like Bill Sutley, my construction boss. Alara! He's around the bend in back of us, I think. I'll turn the canoe around. Oh, this way. Mr. Mahon. Oh, there he is. Sutley, here we are. Mr. Mahon. Something wrong? Mr. Mahon, the Yellow Fever in Norfolk. What? Bring up like a reed fire. Folks dying off faster than they'd be buried. Everybody's pulling up stakes and high-tailing it off. The survey and gags moved out. Locked stock and barrel. And they're camped outside Norfolk, no. Yellow Fever. Bill, you take Mrs. Mahon back to Suffolk. Yes, sir. You go on to Norfolk? Of course I'm going to Norfolk. Where do you think I'd be going? Timbuck, too? All right, now, men. Who's doing the talking for you? Ben Thomas? We're quitting, Mr. Mahon. We ain't going into Norfolk. You signed with me to do a job? That we did. But nothing we signed says we've got to go near Yellowjack. Now, wait a minute, boys. Wait a minute. Wait till it blows over a couple of days and we can get down to work again. Yellowjack doesn't dry up in a couple of days, Mr. Mahon. You know that for yourself. It'll be months. And we're not squatting around waiting for it to pay us a visit. No, sir. Not us. Let's go, man. All right. Get out, then. Run away. Keep running until you run your legs off. And when you come back to Norfolk, it'll be by steam, on rails. And I hope you can afford to buy a ticket. You are listening to the Cavalcade of America starring William Holden as Will Mahon and Brenda Marshall as Othelia Butler, sponsored by the DuPont company, makers of better things for better living through chemistry. We continue our DuPont play. A young Virginia engineer, William Mahon, has evolved a daring plan to build a railroad from Petersburg to Norfolk right through the heart of the great dismal swamp. In the late summer of 1855, an epidemic of yellow fever has suddenly swept down on the city of Norfolk, forcing Mahon to suspend construction. It's a few days later now, and he's meeting with the board of directors of the proposed Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad in their Richmond office. But just how bad is the plague in Norfolk, Mahon? It's very bad, Dr. Mallory. You can't even describe it. The streets are empty, and the only sound you hear is the wagon that goes around collecting the dead. Well, that's terrible. You'll never get a construction crew together that'll go near the town now. That you can be sure of. Sure enough, Mr. Camp. Gentlemen, I have a suggestion. Yes, sir? I propose that we end our line at Suffolk. Forget about going into Norfolk. End the line at Suffolk? Well, you can't be serious, sir. It's got to get into Norfolk. It's got to reach the sea. But you said yourself, sir, that Norfolk is a dead city. It may never come back. Oh, don't you ever believe that. Norfolk will come back. It's got a future. One look at the map, it'll tell you that. But, Mr. Mahon, we've got to take a practical view of our problem. Practical view by all means. All right, here's a practical view. Norfolk is one of the best harbors on the coast. It's the nearest and best point for the flow of trade between the ports of Europe and the Valley of Mississippi. Patrick Henry said that, and Jefferson agreed with him. Norfolk is Virginia's door to the world. You can't slam it shut. What other choice do we have? Keep building. If we can't get our construction gangs into the city now, then let's get started going through the swamp. That'll take months. And by the time we reach Norfolk, the fee will have run its course. It's a great gamble bringing a railroad into a dying city. It's worth the gamble. I agree. Start building through the swamp, Mahon. Start at once. Flag her down, Jim. She better not run out any further. Mr. Mahon, coming in on the construction train? He is. Does he know about it yet? Oh, not yet. He ain't going to like hearing it. I ain't going to like telling him. There he is, waving from the engine tender. He's got the Mrs. with him. Hi there, sir. Hello, Mr. Mahon. I brought the Mrs. with me. Give me a hand here. I'm proud we are to have you with us, Mrs. Mahon. What's your foot now getting down kind of muddy here about? There you are. Thank you, Mr. Southerly. Oh, please don't worry about me. I'll be getting back to Suffolk by nightfall. Mr. Mahon insisted that I come down and see how well you were going. Oh, he did, eh? Maybe it's how we better help you right back on that train. What are you talking about? We ain't going well. Huh? We not only ain't going well, we ain't going nowhere. What's wrong now? Well, it seems we hit ourselves a little mud patch. Not just your plain, housebroken kind of mud, but the oozy, slimyest mud ever put out by the imps of Satan. You know that field we had in the section we finished it's for you left? Yes, what about it? Nothing, except it ain't. Suck right down into the mud the whole blasted in banks. I don't believe you don't say. Well, you just walk right along there a couple of hundred yards and see for yourself. Mr. Mahon, you ain't never going to get a train to run on rails through this air swap, not unless you find some way to float on mud. Well, that's all. I've seen enough. Stay here, Tiller. No use trying to go further. Just let me sit down. Be careful, ma'am. Let me route around that dark tree stump first. Snake's got a funny way of picking up stumps to the skin. Yeah, I'll reckon this one's vacant. I hope so. Three weeks' work. Three solid weeks' work. And look at it. More water than fill. Call the halt for this section yesterday. Nothing else to do. Settling. Yes, sir. You're going back to the camp. Start packing up. Pay off the men. Oh, can't you try another way, William? There must be another way. I was given a job to do it, Tiller. A job that I said I could do. Cut through the great dismal. Well, it looks like I bit off more than I could chew. Go on back, Settling. Yes, sir. Might as sorry, ma'am. I'm sorry, too. Dad, don't tarry too long here about, Mr. Malone. I'd have come down like tall timber out here. That's fair. Leave me a snake and lose his way once daylight's gone. I'll be back as soon as Mrs. Mahoney's had a chance to catch a breath. Yes, sir. Well, there'd be many a laugh in Richmond when this gets out. All the wise ones were saying that I was too young for the job, too young and cocky. They said the swamp would get me. And they're right. Oh, it's not your fault, dear. Well, whose fault is it then? The job's a failure, isn't it? And what gets me? What's eating me to the bone is the fact it wasn't the wildness of the swamp that stopped us, the snakes, the bugs, even the ghost didn't stop us. It was the mud. The great Mahone stuck in the mud. Well, let's go back. All right. Oh, let me hold you by your hand. It's awfully slippery here. Yes, it is. I'll find you a tree limb or something you can walk with. Oh, there. There's one in the water. Oh, be careful. I'll fish it out. Ah, here we are. Oh, that'll be fine. Wait a minute. Look at this atelier. Quite some kind of an instrument. Well, sure it is. An old-fashioned surveyor's staff. And really an old one, too. Hey, there's something carved on the compass. Can you make it out? Let's see. It's a date, 1763. 1763. Well, that must have been lost from George Washington's surveying party. That might have been belonged to Washington himself. It's funny, though. What's funny? You know, it's probably been lying in that water for almost 100 years. Ah, that's right. You'd think it would have rotted away, but the wood looks perfectly good. As good as new. Well, sure it is. When wood is entirely immersed, water acts as a preservative. Oh, it does? I didn't know that. Well, shall we go back? Shall we? William? Huh? What's the matter with you? What are you staring at? This staff, Atelier, it's given me an idea. About what? Water acts as a preservative. It preserves. What are you talking about? About a railroad and a swamp and following a firefly lamp. Come on, Atelier, let's get back. Sutley says we can't get trains to run on rails with a slop, not unless we float iron on mud. All right, that's just what we're going to do. Boat iron on mud. Let me ask you something, Bill. What's the only kind of roadway you can build through a swamp? The only kind that'll hold up. Plank road, corduroy, you know that. Right. And that's just what we do. We dig a right of way, 100 foot wide, clean across the swamp. We put down a corduroy, a plank road of cypress logs. And then on top of the logs, we build our embankment. Ditches along the side will carry water above the level of the planks, keeping them always in water, underwater. A road on top of a road. That's it. The wild idea. It is, but a good one. Now get your lumberjacks to work. We're going right through the Great Dismal Swamp this time, right through to Norfolk. Memorandum to the Board of Directors. Progress of the roadbed through the Great Dismal Swamp is proceeding on schedule. The rails are already laid in the section between Jericho Creek and the land company's canal. My dear Atelier, I wish I could give you a reporter what's going on here. It's a tremendous undertaking. Our men work way deep in water most of the time, but look out, spaced every few feet to fight off the poisonous snakes. So far, we have found no ghosts, but there isn't a man on the job who wouldn't prefer a dozen ghosts to one live wriggling coffee. I am greatly pleased to inform you and other members of the Board that our line is complete. We expect to run our first train into Norfolk on September the 1st. I have taken the liberty of asking my wife to come along. This will be a great occasion for Norfolk, for Virginia, for all the company. We're coming into Norfolk, dear. We've just passed the city line. And the city's alive. Look at it, Atelier, people cheering all along the way. And nobody believed it could be done. Iron rails, cutting through the Great Dismal Swamp. That's what you did, it will. Oh, I'm so proud of you. Proud of me? A man like me, crude, unpolished, with no love for such fine things as poetry? I'm surprised that you, Atelier Butler. Her name isn't Atelier Butler. It's Atelier Mahon, wife of William Mahon. And you best be very nice to me. And if not, then I'll run away. To the lake of the Dismal Swamp? That's right. I'll come after you. How? Paddling a white canoe? Not me. I'll be riding on the 448 out of Norfolk. Oh, so unromantic. Maybe, but a lot more reliable. We're coming into the station. A dying city, they said. Not Norfolk. Sotley, tie down that whistle. We're here. That was the beginning. Today, on the main line of the Norfolk and Western Railway, 56 million tons of coal are carried in a single year. Tons of freight and thousands of passengers. They ride the line laid down through the Dismal Swamp almost 100 years ago. A line that today recalls the vision and the resourcefulness of Wilma Holm, who, in the spirit and tradition of freedom, freedom of enterprise and of opportunity, built Virginia's gateway to the West. Our thanks to William Holden and Brenda Marshall and to our cavalcade players for tonight's Dupont story, The Firefly Lands. Next week, the Dupont cavalcade will present the popular Hollywood star, Lee Bowman. Our play tells of a young man who walked 1,600 miles, but who refused to walk out on a dream. Be sure to listen. Tonight's Dupont cavalcade, The Firefly Lamp, was written by Irf Tunik. William Holden may soon be seen co-starring with Gloria Swanson in the Paramount picture, Sunset Boulevard. Music was composed by Arden Cornwell and conducted by Donald Voorhees. The program was directed by John Zoller. Ladies and gentlemen, during this national YWCA week, we join the nation in saluting this great organization of three million American women and girls, an integral part of our rural and urban communities and our churches and our schools. The YWCA brings a distinguished contribution to our country's welfare with its high ideals of character and patriotism. The Dupont cavalcade of America comes to you from the stage of the Blasco Theatre in New York and is sponsored by the Dupont Company of Wilmington, Delaware, makers of better things for better living through chemistry. Baby Snooks, Harris' daddy next on NBC.