A PORTAGE TO LAKE WACCAMAW.—THE SUBMERGED SWAMPS.—NIGHT
AT A TURPENTINE DISTILLERY.—A DISMAL WILDERNESS.—OWLS
AND MISTLETOE.—CRACKERS AND NEGROES.—ACROSS
THE SOUTH CAROLINA LINE.—A CRACKER'S IDEA OF
HOSPITALITY.—POT BLUFF.—PEEDEE RIVER.—GEORGETOWN.—WINYAH
BAY.—THE RICE PLANTATIONS OF THE SANTEE
RIVERS.—A NIGHT WITH THE SANTEE NEGROES.—ARRIVAL
AT CHARLESTON.
TO reach my next point of embarkation a
portage was necessary. Wilmington was
twelve miles distant, and I reached the railroad
station of that city with my canoe packed in a
bed of corn-husks, on a one-horse dray, in time
to take the evening train to Flemington, on Lake
Waccamaw. The polite general freight-agent,
Mr. A. Pope, allowed my canoe to be transported
in the passenger baggage-car, where, as it had
no covering, I was obliged to steady it during
the ride of thirty-two miles, to protect it from
the friction caused by the motion of the train.
Mr. Pope quietly telegraphed to the few families
at the lake, "Take care of the paper canoe;" so
when my destination was reached, kind voices
greeted me through the darkness and offered me
the hospitalities of Mrs. Brothers' home-like inn
at the Flemington Station. After Mr. Carroll had
conveyed the boat to his storehouse, we all sat
down to tea as sociably as though we were old
friends.
On the morrow we carried the Maria Theresa
on our shoulders to the little lake, out of which
the long and crooked river with its dark cypress
waters flowed to the sea. A son of Mr. Short,
a landed proprietor who holds some sixty thousand
acres of the swamp lands of the Waccamaw,
escorted me in his yacht, with a party of ladies
and gentlemen, five miles across the lake to my
point of departure. It was now noon, and our
little party picnicked under the lofty trees which
rise from the low shores of Lake Waccamaw.
A little later we said our adieu, and the paper
canoe shot into the whirling current which rushes
out of the lake through a narrow aperture into
a great and dismal swamp. Before leaving the
party, Mr. Carroll had handed me a letter addressed
to Mr. Hall, who was in charge of a
turpentine distillery on my route. "It is twenty
miles by the river to my friend Hall's," he said,
"but in a straight line the place is just four
miles from here." Such is the character of the
Waccamaw, this most crooked of rivers.
I had never been on so rapid and continuous
a current. As it whirled me along the narrow
watercourse I was compelled to abandon my
oars and use the paddle in order to have my face
to the bow, as the abrupt turns of the stream
seemed to wall me in on every side. Down
the tortuous, black, rolling current went the
paper canoe, with a giant forest covering the
great swamp and screening me from the light
of day. The swamps were submerged, and as
the water poured out of the thickets into the
river it would shoot across the land from one
bend to another, presenting in places the mystifying
spectacle of water running up stream, but
not up an inclined plain. Festoons of gray
Spanish moss hung from the weird limbs of
monster trees, giving a funeral aspect to the
gloomy forest, while the owls hooted as though
it were night. The creamy, wax-like berries
of the mistletoe gave a Druidical aspect to the
woods, for this parasite grew upon the branches
of many trees.
One spot only of firm land rose from the water
in sixteen miles of paddling from the lake, and
passing it, I went flying on with the turbulent
stream four miles further, to where rafts of logs
blocked the river, and the sandy banks, covered
with the upland forest of pines, encroached upon
the lowlands. This was Old Dock, with its
turpentine distillery smoking and sending out
resinous vapors.
Young Mr. Hall read my letter and invited
me to his temporary home, which, though
roughly built of unplaned boards, possessed two
comfortable rooms, and a large fireplace, in
which light-wood, the terebinthine heart of the
pine-tree, was cheerfully blazing.
I had made the twenty miles in three hours,
but the credit of this quick time must be given
to the rapid current. My host did not seem
well pleased with the solitude imposed upon
him. His employers had sent him from Wilmington,
to hold and protect "their turpentine
farm," which was a wilderness of trees covering
four thousand acres, and was valued, with its
distillery, at five thousand dollars. An old
negro, who attended the still and cooked the
meals, was his only companion.
We had finished our frugal repast, when a
man, shouting in the darkness, approached the
house on horseback. This individual, though
very tipsy, represented Law and Order in that
district, as I was informed when "Jim Gore," a
justice of the peace, saluted me in a boisterous
manner. Seating himself by the fire, he earnestly
inquired for the bottle. His stomach, he
said, was as dry as a lime-kiln, and, though water
answers to slake lime, he demanded something
stronger to slake the fire that burned within
him. He was very suspicious of me when
Hall told him of my canoe journey. After
eying me from head to toe in as steady a manner
as he was capable of, he broke forth with: "Now,
stranger, this won't do. What are ye a-travelling
in this sort of way for, in a paper dug-out?"
I pleaded a strong desire to study geography,
but the wise fellow replied:
"Geography! geography! Why, the fellers
who rite geography never travel; they stay at
home and spin their yarns 'bout things they
never sees." Then, glancing at his poor butternut
coat and pantaloons, he felt my blue woollen
suit, and continued, in a slow, husky voice:
"Stranger, them clothes cost something; they
be store-clothes. That paper dug-out cost money,
I tell ye; and it costs something to travel the hull
length of the land. No, stranger; if ye be not
on a bet, then somebody's a-paying ye well for it."
For an hour I entertained this roughest of law
dignitaries with an account of my long row, its
trials and its pleasures. He became interested
in the story, and finally related to me his own
aspirations, and the difficulties attending his efforts
to make the piny-woods people respect the
laws and good government. He then described
the river route through the swamps to the sea,
and, putting his arm around me in the most affectionate
manner, he mournfully said:
"O stranger, my heart is with ye; but O, how
ye will have to take it when ye go past those
awful wretches to-morrow; how they will give
it to ye! They most knocked me off my raft,
last time I went to Georgetown. Beware of
them; I warn ye in time. Dern the hussies."
Squire Jim so emphasized the danger that I
became somewhat alarmed, for, more than anything
else, I dreaded an outbreak with rough
women. And then, too, my new acquaintance
informed me that there were four or five of these
wretches, of the worst kind, located several
miles down the stream. As I was about to inquire
into the habits of these ugly old crones,
Mr. Hall, wishing to give Squire James a hint,
remarked that Mr. B—— might at any time retire
to the next room, where half the bed was at
his disposal.
"Half the bed!" roared the squire; "here
are three of us, and where's my half?"
"Why, squire," hesitatingly responded my
host, "Mr. B—— is my guest, and having but
one bed, he must have half of it—no less."
"Then what's to become of me?" thundered
his Majesty of the law.
Having been informed that a shake-down
would have been ready had he given notice of
his visit, and that at some future time, when not
so crowded, he could be entertained like a gentleman,
he drew himself up, wrapped in the
mantle of dignity, and replied:
"None of that soft talk, my friend. This
man is a traveller; let him take travellers'
luck—three in a bed to-night. I'm bound
to sleep with him to-night. Hall, where's the
bottle?"
I now retired to the back room, and, without
undressing, planted myself on the side of the
bed next the wall. Sleep was, however, an unattainable
luxury, with the squire's voice in the
next room, as he told how the country was going
to the dogs, because "niggers and white folks
wouldn't respect the laws. It took half a man's
time to larn it to 'em, and much thanks he ever
got by setting everybody to rights." He wound
up by lecturing Hall for being so temperate,
his diligent search in all directions for bottles or
jugs being rewarded by finding them filled with
unsatisfactory emptiness.
He then tumbled into the centre of the bed,
crowding me close against the wall. Poor Hall,
having the outside left to him, spent the night in
exercising his brain and muscles in vain attempts
to keep in his bed; for when his Majesty of the
law put his arms akimbo, the traveller went to
the wall, and the host to the floor. Thus passed
my first night in the great swamps of the Waccamaw
River.
The negro cook gave us an early breakfast of
bacon, sweet potatoes, and corn bread. The
squire again looked round for the bottle, and
again found nothing but emptiness. He helped
me to carry my canoe along the unsteady footing
of the dark swamp to the lower side of the
raft of logs, and warmly pressed my hand as he
whispered: "My dear B——, I shall think of
you until you get past those dreadful 'wretches.'
Keep an eye on your little boat, or they'll devil
you."
Propelled by my double paddle, the canoe
seemed to fly through the great forest that rose
with its tall trunks and weird, moss-draped
arms, out of the water. The owls were still
hooting. Indeed, the dolorous voice of this bird
of darkness sounded through the heavy woods
at intervals throughout the day. I seemed to
have left the real world behind me, and to have
entered upon a landless region of sky, trees, and
water.
"Beware of the cut-offs," said Hall, before I
left. "Only the Crackers and shingle-makers
know them. If followed, they would save you
many a mile, but every opening through the
swamp is not a cut-off. Keep to the main
stream, though it be more crooked and longer.
If you take to the cut-offs, you may get into
passages that will lead you off into the swamps
and into interior bayous, from which you will
never emerge. Men have starved to death in
such places."
So I followed the winding stream, which
turned back upon itself, running north and south,
and east and west, as if trying to box the compass
by following the sun in its revolution. After
paddling down one bend, I could toss a stick
through the trees into the stream where the canoe
had cleaved its waters a quarter of a mile behind
me.
The thought of what I should do in this landless
region if my frail shell, in its rapid flight to
the sea, happened to be pierced by a snag, was,
to say the least, not a comforting one. On what
could I stand to repair it? To climb a tree
seemed, in such a case, the only resource; and
then what anxious waiting there would be for
some cypress-shingle maker, in his dug-out canoe,
to come to the rescue, and take the traveller
from his dangerous lodgings between heaven and
earth; or it might be that no one would pass that
way, and the weary waiting would be even unto
death.
But sounds now reached my ears that made
me feel that I was not quite alone in this desolate
swamp. The gray squirrels scolded among the
tree-tops; robins, the brown thrush, and a large
black woodpecker with his bright red head,
each reminded me of Him without whose notice
not a sparrow falleth to the ground.
Ten miles of this black current were passed
over, when the first signs of civilization appeared,
in the shape of a sombre-looking, two-storied
house, located upon a point of the mainland
which entered the swamp on the left shore of
the river. At this point the river widened to five
or six rods, and at intervals land appeared a few
inches above the water. Wherever the pine
land touched the river a pig-pen of rails offered
shelter and a gathering-place for the hogs,
which are turned loose by the white Cracker
to feed upon the roots and mast of the wilderness.
Reeve's Ferry, on the right bank, with a little
store and turpentine-still, twenty miles from Old
Dock, was the next sign of the presence of man
in this swamp. The river now became broad as
I approached Piraway Ferry, which is two miles
below Piraway Farm. Remembering the warnings
of the squire as to the "awful wretches in
the big pine woods," I kept a sharp lookout for
the old women who were to give me so much
trouble, but the raftsmen on the river explained
that though Jim Gore had told me the truth, I
had misunderstood his pronunciation of the word
reaches, or river bends, which are called in
this vicinity wretches. The reaches referred to
by Mr. Gore were so long and straight as to
afford open passages for wind to blow up them,
and these fierce gusts of head winds give the
raftsmen much trouble while poling their rafts
against them.
My fears of ill treatment were now at rest, for
my tiny craft, with her sharp-pointed bow, was
well adapted for such work. Landing at the
ferry where a small scow or flat-boat was resting
upon the firm land, the ferryman, Mr. Daniel
Dunkin, would not permit me to camp out of
doors while his log-cabin was only one mile
away on the pine-covered uplands. He told me
that the boundary-line between North and South
Carolina crossed this swamp three and a half
miles below Piraway Ferry, and that the first
town on the river Waccamaw, in South Carolina,
Conwayborough, was a distance of ninety miles
by river and only thirty miles by land. There
was but one bridge over the river, from its head
to Conwayborough, and it was built by Mr.
James Wortham, twenty years before, for his
plantation. This bridge was twenty miles below
Piraway, and from it by land to a settlement on
Little River, which empties into the Atlantic,
was a distance of only five miles. A short canal
would connect this river and its lumber regions
with Little River and the sea.
For the first time in my experience as a traveller
I had entered a country where the miles
were short. When fifteen years old I made my
first journey alone and on foot from the vicinity
of Boston to the White Mountains of New
Hampshire. This boyish pedestrian trip occupied
about twenty-one days, and covered some
three hundred miles of hard tramping. New
England gives honest measure on the finger-posts
along her highways. The traveller learns
by well-earned experience the length of her
miles; but in the wilderness of the south there
is no standard of five thousand two hundred and
eighty feet to a statute mile, and the watermen
along the sea-coast are ignorant of the fact that
one-sixtieth of a degree of latitude (about six
thousand and eighty feet) is the geographical
and nautical mile of the cartographer, as well
as the "knot" of the sailor.
At Piraway Ferry no two of the raftsmen and
lumbermen, ignorant or educated, would give the
same distance, either upon the lengths of surveyed
roads or unmeasured rivers. "It is one hundred
and sixty-five miles by river from Piraway Ferry
to Conwayborough," said one who had travelled
the route for years. The most moderate estimate
made was that of ninety miles by river. The
reader, therefore, must not accuse me of over-stating
distances while absent from the seaboard,
as my friends of the Coast Survey Bureau have
not yet penetrated into these interior regions with
their theodolites, plane-tables, and telametre-rods.
To the canoeist, who is ambitious to score
up miles instead of collecting geographical notes,
these wild rivers afford an excellent opportunity
to satisfy his aims.
From sixty to eighty miles can be rowed in
ten hours as easily as forty miles can be gone
over upon a river of slow current in the northern
states. There is, I am sorry to say,
a class of American travellers who "do" all the
capitals of Europe in the same business-like way,
and if they have anything to say in regard to
every-day life in the countries through which
they pass, they forget to thank the compiler of
the guide-book for the information they possess.
There was but one room in the cabin of my
new acquaintance, who represented that class of
piny-woods people called in the south—because
they subsist largely upon corn,—Corn Crackers,
or Crackers. These Crackers are the "poor white
folks" of the planter, and "de white trash" of
the old slave, who now as a freedman is beginning
to feel the responsibility of his position.
These Crackers are a very kind-hearted people,
but few of them can read or write. The children
of the negro, filled with curiosity and a new-born
pride, whenever opportunity permits, attend
the schools in large numbers; but the very
indolent white man seems to be destitute of all
ambition, and his children, in many places in the
south, following close in the father's footsteps,
grow up in an almost unimaginable ignorance.
The news of the arrival of the little Maria
Theresa at Piraway Ferry spread with astonishing
rapidity through the woods, and on Sunday,
after "de shoutings," as the negroes call their
meetings, were over, the blacks came in numbers
to see "dat Yankee-man's paper canno."
These simple people eyed me from head to foot
with a grave sort of curiosity, their great mouths
open, displaying pearly teeth of which a white
man might well be proud. "You is a good man,
capt'n—we knows dat," they said; and when I
asked why, the answer showed their child-like
faith. "'Cause you couldn't hab come all dis
way in a paper boat if de Lord hadn't helped
you. He dono help only good folks."
The Cracker also came with his children to
view the wonder, while the raftsmen were so
struck with the advantages of my double paddle,
which originated with the inhabitants of the
Arctic regions, that they laid it upon a board and
drew its outlines with chalk. They vowed they
would introduce it upon the river.
These Crackers declared it would take more
than "de shoutings," or any other religious
service, to improve the moral condition of
the blacks. They openly accused the colored
preachers of disturbing the nocturnal rest of
their hens and turkeys; and as to hog-stealing
and cow-killing, "Why, we won't have any critters
left ef this carpet-bag government lasts much
longer!" they feelingly exclaimed.
"We does nothing to nobody. We lets the
niggers alone; but niggers will steal—they can't
help it, the poor devils; it's in 'em. Now, ef they
eats us out of house and home, what can a poor
man do? They puts 'em up for justices of peace,
and sends 'em to the legislature, when they can't
read more'n us; and they do say it's 'cause we
fit in the Confederate sarvice that they razes the
nigger over our heads. Now, does the folkes up
north like to see white people tyrannized over
by niggers? Jes tell 'em when you go back,
stranger, that we's got soulds like yours up
north, and we's got feelings too, by thunder! jes
like other white men. This was a white man's
country once—now it's all niggers and dogs.
Why, them niggers in the legislature has spit-boxes
lined with gold to spit in! What's this
country a-coming to? We wish the niggers no
harm if they lets our hogs and chickens alone."
After this tirade it was amusing to see how
friendly the whites and blacks were. The Crackers
conversed with these children of Ham, who
had been stealing their hams for so long a time,
in the most kindly way, realizing, perhaps, that
they had various peculiar traits of their own, and
must, after all, endure their neighbors.
A traveller should place facts before his readers,
and leave to them the drawing of the moral.
Northern men and women who go to the southern
states and reside for even the short space of
a year or two, invariably change their life-long
views and principles regarding the negro as a
moral and social creature. When these people
return to their homes in Maine or Massachusetts
(as did the representatives of the Granges of the
northern states after they had visited South Carolina
in 1875) a new light, derived from contact
with facts, dawns upon them, while their surprised
and untravelled neighbors say: "So you
have become Southern in your views. I never
would have thought that of you."
The railroad has become one of the great mediums
of enlightenment to mankind, and joins in
a social fraternity the disunited elements of a
country. God grant that the resources of the
great South may soon be developed by the capital
and free labor of the North. Our sister states
of the South, exhausted by the struggles of the
late war which resulted in consolidating more
firmly than ever the great Union, are now ready
to receive every honest effort to develop their
wealth or cultivate their territory. Let every
national patriot give up narrowness of views and
sectional selfishness and become acquainted with
(not the politicians) the people of the New
South, and a harmony of feeling will soon possess
the hearts of all true lovers of a government
of the people.
The swamp tributaries were swelling the river
into a very rapid torrent as I paddled away from
the ferry on Monday, January 18. A warmer
latitude having been reached, I could dispense
with one blanket, and this I had presented to my
kind host, who had refused to accept payment
for his hospitality. He was very proud of his
present, and said, feelingly, "No one shall touch
this but me." His good wife had baked some
of a rich and very nice variety of sweet-potatoes,
unlike those we get in New Jersey or the other
Middle States—which potatoes she kindly added
to my stores. They are not dry or mealy when
cooked, but seem saturated with honey. The
poor woman's gift now occupied the space formerly
taken up by the blanket I had given her
husband.
From this day, as latitude after latitude was
crossed on my way southward, I distributed
every article I could spare, among these poor,
kind-hearted people. Mr. Macgregor went in
his Rob Roy canoe over the rivers of Europe,
"diffusing cheerfulness and distributing Evangelical
tracts." I had no room for tracts, and if I
had followed the example of my well-intentioned
predecessor in canoeing, it would have
served the cause of truth or creed but little.
The Crackers could not read, and but few of
the grown negroes had been taught letters.
They did not want books, but tobacco. Men
and women hailed me from the banks as I glided
along in my canoe, with, "Say, captain, hab you
eny 'bacca or snuff for dis chile?" Poor humanity!
The Cracker and the freedman fill
alike their places according to the light they
possess. Do we, who have been taught from
our youth sacred things, do more than this?
Do we love our neighbor as ourself?
For twenty miles (local authority) I journeyed
down the stream, without seeing a human being
or a dwelling-place, to Stanley's house and the
bridge; from which I urged the canoe thirty-five
miles further, passing an old field on a bluff,
when darkness settled on the swamps, and a
heavy mist rose from the waters and enveloped
the forests in its folds. With not a trace of land
above water I groped about, running into what
appeared to be openings in the submerged land,
only to find my canoe tangled in thickets. It
was useless to go further, and I prepared to
ascend to the forks of a giant tree, with a light
rope, to be used for lashing my body into a safe
position, when a long, low cry engaged my attention.
"Waugh! ho! ho! ho! peig—peig—pe-ig—pe-ig,"
came through the still, thick air. It was
not an owl, nor a catamount that cried thus; nor
was it the bark of a fox. It was the voice of a
Cracker calling in his hogs from the forest.
This sound was indeed pleasant to my ears,
for I knew the upland was near, and that a
warm fire awaited my benumbed limbs in the
cabin of this unknown man. Pushing the canoe
towards the sound, and feeling the submerged
border of the swamp with my paddle, I struck
the upland where it touched the water, and disembarking,
felt my way along a well-trodden
path to a little clearing. Here a drove of hogs
were crowding around their owner, who was
scattering kernels of corn about him as he vociferated,
"pe-ig—pe-ig—pe-ig—pig—pig—pig."
We stood face to face, yet neither could
see the face of the other in the darkness. I told
my tale, and asked where I could find a sheltered
spot to camp.
"Stranger," slowly replied the Cracker, "my
cabin's close at hand. Come home with me.
It's a bad night for a man to lay out in; and the
niggers would steal your traps if they knew you
had anything worth taking. Come with me."
In the tall pines near at hand was a cabin of
peeled rails, the chinks between them being
stuffed with moss. A roof of cypress shingles
kept the rain out. The log chimney, which was
plastered with mud, was built outside of the
walls and against an end of the rustic-looking
structure. The wide-mouthed fireplace sent
forth a blaze of light as we entered the poor
man's home. I saw in the nicely swept floor,
the clean bed-spreads, and the general neatness
of the place, the character of Wilson Edge's
wife.
"Hog and hominy's our food here in the piny
woods," said Mr. Edge, as his wife invited us to
the little table; "and we've a few eggs now and
then to eat with sweet potatoes, but it's up-hill
work to keep the niggers from killing every fowl
and animal we have. The carpet-bag politicians
promised them every one, for his vote, forty acres
of land and a mule. They sed as how the
northern government was a-going to give it to
um; but the poor devils never got any thanks
even for their votes. They had been stuffed
with all sorts of notions by the carpet-baggers,
and I don't blame um for putting on airs and
trying to rule us. It's human natur, that's all.
We don't blame the niggers half so much as
those who puts it in their heads to do so; but it's
hard times we've had, we poor woods folks.
They took our children for the cussed war, to
fight fur niggers and rich people as owned um.
"We never could find out what all the fuss
was about; but when Jeff Davis made a law to
exempt every man from the army who owned
fifteen niggers, then our blood riz right up,
and we sez to our neighbors, 'This ere thing's
a-getting to be a rich man's quarrel and a poor
man's fight.' After all they dragged off my boy
to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and killed him
a fighting for what? Why, for rich nigger
owners. Our young men hid in the swamps,
but they were hunted up and forced into the
army. Niggers has been our ruin. Ef a white
man takes a case before a nigger justice, he
gives the nigger everything, and the white man
has to stand one side. Now, would you folks up
north like to have a nigger justice who can't
read nor count ten figgurs?"
I tried to comfort the poor man, by assuring
him that outside of the political enemies of our
peace, the masses in the north were honestly
inclined towards the south now that slavery
was at an end; and that wrong could not long
prevail, with the cheerful prospect of a new
administration, and the removal of all unconstitutional
forces that preyed upon the south.
The two beds in the single room of the cabin
were occupied by the family; while I slept upon
the floor by the fire, with my blankets for a
couch and a roll of homespun for a pillow,
which the women called "heading." They
often said, "Let me give you some heading for
your bed." We waited until eight o'clock the
next day for the mists to rise from the swamps.
My daily trouble was now upon me. How could
I remunerate a southerner for his cost of keeping
me, when not, in the true sense of the word,
an invited guest to his hospitality?
Wilson Edge sat by the fire, while his wife
and little ones were preparing to accompany me
to see the paper boat. "Mr. Edge," I stammered,
"you have treated me with great kindness,
your wife has been put to some inconvenience,
as I came in so unexpected a manner, and
you will really oblige me if you will accept a
little money for all this; though money cannot
pay for your hospitality. Grant my wish, and
you will send me away with a light heart."
The poor Cracker lowered his head and slowly
ran his fingers through his coal black hair. For
a moment he seemed studying a reply, and then
he spoke as though HE represented the whole
generous heart of the south.
"Stranger," he slowly articulated, "Stranger,
I have known white men to be niggers enough
to take a stranger's money for lodgings and
vittles, but I am not that man."
We found the canoe as it had been left the
night before, and I was soon pulling down the
river. The great wilderness was traversed thirty
miles to the county town of Conwayborough,
where the negroes roared with laughter at the
working of the double paddle, as I shot past the
landing-place where cotton and naval stores
were piled, waiting to be lightered nine miles to
Pot Bluff,—so called from the fact of a pot
being lost from a vessel near it,—which place
is reached by vessels from New York drawing
twelve feet of water. Though still a long distance
from the ocean, I was beginning to feel its
tidal influences. At Pot Bluff, the landing and
comfortable home of its owner, Mr. Z. W. Dusenberry,
presented a pleasant relief after the
monotony of the great pine forests. This enterprising
business man made my short stay a very
pleasant one.
Wednesday, January 20th, was cold for this
latitude, and ice formed in thin sheets in the
water-pails. Twenty-two miles below Pot Bluff,
Bull Creek enters the Waccamaw from the Peedee
River. At the mouth of this connecting
watercourse is Tip Top, the first rice plantation
of the Waccamaw. The Peedee and its sister
stream run an almost parallel course from Bull
Creek to Winyah Bay, making their debouchure
close to the city of Georgetown. Steam saw-mills
and rice plantations take the place of the
forests from a few miles below Tip Top to the
vicinity of Georgetown.
Mr. M. L. Blakely, of New York, one of the
largest shingle manufacturers of the south, occupied
as his headquarters the Bates Hill Plantation,
on the Peedee. This gentleman had invited
me, through the medium of the post-office, to
visit him in the rice-growing regions of South
Carolina. To reach his home I took the short
"cut-off" which Bull Creek offered, and entered
upon the strongest of head-currents. The thick,
yellow, muddy torrent of the Peedee rushed
through Bull Creek with such volume, that I
wondered if it left much water on the other side,
to give character to the river, as it followed its
own channel to Winyah Bay.
One and a half miles of vigorous paddling
brought me to a branch of the watercourse,
which is much narrower than the main one, and
is consequently called Little Bull Creek. This
also comes from the Peedee River, and its source
is nearer to the Bates Hill plantation than the
main Bull Creek. To urge the canoe up this
narrow stream three miles and a half to the
parent river Peedee, was a most trying ordeal.
At times the boat would not move a hundred
feet in five minutes, and often, as my strength
seemed failing me, I caught the friendly branches
of trees, and held on to keep the canoe from
being whirled down the current towards the
Waccamaw. After long and persistent efforts
had exhausted my strength, I was about to seek
for a resting-place in the swamp, when a view
of the broad Peedee opened before me, and with
vigorous strokes of the paddle the canoe slowly
approached the mighty current. A moment
more and it was within its grasp, and went flying
down the turbulent stream at the rate of ten
miles an hour.
A loud halloo greeted me from the swamp,
where a party of negro shingle-makers were at
work. They manned their boat, a long cypress
dug-out, and followed me. Their employer, who
proved to be the gentleman whose abiding-place
I was now rapidly approaching, sat in the stern.
We landed together before the old plantation-house,
which had been occupied a few years
before by members of the wealthy and powerful
rice-planting aristocracy of the Peedee, but was
now the temporary home of a northern man,
who was busily employed in guiding the labors
of his four hundred freedmen in the swamps of
North and South Carolina.
The paper canoe had now entered the regions
of the rice-planter. Along the low banks of the
Peedee were diked marshes where, before the
civil war, each estate produced from five thousand
to forty thousand bushels of rice annually,
and the lords of rice were more powerful than
those of cotton, though cotton was king. The
rich lands here produced as high as fifty-five
bushels of rice to the acre, under forced slave
labor; now the free blacks cannot wrest from
nature more than twenty-five or thirty bushels.
Fine old mansions lined the river's banks, but
the families had been so reduced by the ravages
of war, that I saw refined ladies, who had been
educated in the schools of Edinburgh, Scotland,
overseeing the negroes as they worked in the
yards of the rice-mills. The undaunted spirit of
these southern ladies, as they worked in their
homes now so desolate, roused my admiration.
A light, graceful figure, enveloped in an old
shawl, and mounted on an old horse, flitted about
one plantation like a restless spirit.
"That lady's father," said a gentleman to me,
"owned three plantations, worth three millions
of dollars, before the war. There is a rice-mill
on one of the plantations which cost thirty thousand
dollars. She now fights against misfortune,
and will not give up. The Confederate war
would not have lasted six months if it had not
been for our women. They drove thousands of
us young men into the fight; and now, having
lost all, they go bravely to work, even taking the
places of their old servants in their grand old
homes. It's hard for them, though, I assure
you."
On Tuesday, January 25th, I paddled down the
Peedee, stopping at the plantations of Dr. Weston
and Colonel Benjamin Allston. The latter
gentleman was a son of one of the governors of
South Carolina. He kindly gave me a letter of
introduction to Commodore Richard Lowndes,
who lived near the coast. From the Peedee I
passed through a cut in the marshes into the
broad Waccamaw, and descended it to Winyah
Bay.
Georgetown is located between the mouths of
the Peedee and Sampit rivers. Cautiously approaching
the city, I landed at Mr. David Risley's
steam saw-mills, and that gentleman kindly
secreted my boat in a back counting-room, while
I went up town to visit the post-office. By some,
to me, unaccountable means, the people had
heard of the arrival of the paper boat, and three
elaborately dressed negro women accosted me
with, "Please show wees tree ladies de little
paper boat."
Before I had reached my destination, the post-office,
a body of men met me, on their way to
the steam-mill. The crowd forced me back to
the canoe, and asked so many questions that I
was sorely taxed to find answers for these gentlemen.
There were three editors in the crowd:
two were white men, one a negro. The young
men, who claimed the position of representatives
of the spirit of the place and of the times, published
"The Comet," while the negro, as though
influenced by a spirit of sarcasm, conducted
"The Planet." The third newspaper represented
at the canoe reception was the "Georgetown
Times," which courteously noticed the
little boat that had come so far. The "Planet"
prudently kept in the dark, and said nothing, but
"The Comet," representing the culture of the
young men of the city, published the following
notice of my arrival:
"Tom Collins has at last arrived in his wonderful
paper boat. He has it hitched to Mr.
Risley's new saw-mill, where every one can
have a view. He intends shooting off his six-pounder
before weighing anchor in the morning.
Hurrah for Collins."
I left Mr. Risley's comfortable home before
noon the next day, and followed the shores of
Winyah Bay towards the sea. Near Battery
White, on the right shore, in the pine forests,
was the birth-place of Marion, the brave patriot
of the American revolution, whose bugle's call
summoned the youth of those days to arms.
When near the inlet, the rice-plantation
marshes skirted the shore for some distance.
Out of these wet lands flowed a little stream,
called Mosquito Creek, which once connected
the North Santee River with Winyah Bay, and
served as a boundary to South Island. The
creek was very crooked, and the ebb-tide strong.
When more than halfway to Santee River I was
forced to leave the stream, as it had become
closed by tidal deposits and rank vegetation.
The ditches of rice plantations emptied their
drainage of the lowlands into Mosquito Creek.
Following a wide ditch to the right, through fields
of rich alluvial soil, which had been wrested by
severe toil from nature, the boat soon reached
the rice-mill of Commodore Richard Lowndes.
A little further on, and situated in a noble grove
of live-oaks, which were draped in the weird
festoons of Spanish moss, on the upland arose
the stately home of the planter, who still kept his
plantation in cultivation, though on a scale of less
magnitude than formerly. It was, indeed, a pleasant
evening that I passed in the company of the
refined members of the old commodore's household,
and with a pang of regret the next day I
paddled along the main canal of the lowlands,
casting backward glances at the old house, with
its grand old trees. The canal ended at North
Santee Bay.
While I was preparing to ascend the river a
tempest arose, which kept me a weary prisoner
among the reeds of the rice marsh. The hollow
reeds made poor fuel for cooking, and when the
dark, stormy night shut down upon me, the damp
soil grew damper as the tide arose, until it threatened
to overflow the land. For hours I lay in my
narrow canoe waiting for the tidal flood to do its
worst, but it receded, and left me without any
means of building a fire, as the reeds were wet
by the storm. The next afternoon, being tired
of this sort of prison-life, and cramped for lack
of exercise, I launched the canoe into the rough
water, and crossing to Crow Island found a lee
under its shores, which permitted me to ascend
the river to the mouth of Atchison Creek, through
which I passed, two miles, to the South Santee
River.
All these rivers are bordered by rice plantations,
many of them having been abandoned to
the care of the freedmen. I saw no white men
upon them. Buildings and dikes are falling into
ruins, and the river freshets frequently inundate the
land. Many of the owners of these once valuable
estates are too much reduced in wealth to attempt
their proper cultivation. It is in any case difficult
to get the freedmen to work through an
entire season, even when well paid for their services,
and they flock to the towns whenever
opportunity permits.
The North and South Santee rivers empty into
the Atlantic, but their entrances are so shallow
that Georgetown Entrance is the inlet through
which most of the produce of the country—pitch,
tar, turpentine, rice, and lumber—finds
exit to the sea. As I left the canal, which, with
the creek, makes a complete thoroughfare for
lighters and small coasters from one Santee River
to the other, a renewal of the tempest made me
seek shelter in an old cabin in a negro settlement,
each house of which was built upon piles driven
into the marshes. The old negro overseer of the
plantation hinted to me that his "hands were
berry spicious of ebbry stranger," and advised me
to row to some other locality. I told him I was
from the north, and would not hurt even one of
the fleas which in multitudes infested his negroes'
quarters; but the old fellow shook his head, and
would not be responsible for me if I staid there
all night. A tall darkey, who had listened to the
conversation, broke in with, "Now, uncle, ye
knows dat if dis gemmum is from de norf he is
one of wees, and ye must du fur him jis dis
time." But "Uncle Overseer" kept repeating,
"Some niggers here is mity spicious. Du not
no who white man is anyhow." "Well, uncle,"
replied the tall black, "ef dis man is a Yankee-mans,
Ise will see him froo."
Then he questioned me, while the fleas, having
telegraphed to each other that a stranger had
arrived, made sad havoc of me and my patience.
"My name's Jacob Gilleu; what's yourn?" I
gave it. "Whar's your home?" came next. "I
am a citizen of the United States," I replied.
"De 'Nited States—whar's dat? neber hurd
him afore," said Jacob Gilleu. Having informed
him it was the land which General Grant
governed, he exclaimed: "O, you's a Grant man;
all rite den; you is one of wees—all de same as
wees. Den look a-here, boss. I send you to one
good place on Alligator Creek, whar Seba Gillings
libs. He black man, but he treat you jes
like white man."
Jacob helped me launch my boat through the
soft mud, which nearly stalled us; and following
his directions I paddled across the South Santee
and coasted down to Alligator Creek, where extensive
marshes, covered by tall reeds, hid the
landscape from my view. About half a mile
from the mouth of the creek, which watercourse
was on my direct route to Bull's Bay, a large
tide-gate was found at the mouth of a canal.
This being wide open, I pushed up the canal to
a low point of land which rose like an island out
of the rushes. Here was a negro hamlet of a
dozen houses, or shanties, and the ruins of a
rice-mill. The majority of the negroes were
absent working within the diked enclosures of
this large estate, which before the war had produced
forty thousand bushels of rice annually.
Now the place was leased by a former slave,
and but little work was accomplished under the
present management.
Seba Gillings, a powerfully built negro, came
to the dike upon which I had landed the canoe.
I quickly told him my story, and how I had been
forced to leave the last negro quarters. I used
Jacob Gilleu's name as authority for seeking
shelter with him from the damps of the half-submerged
lands. The dignified black man bade
me "fear nuffing, stay here all de night, long's
you please; treat you like white man. I'se
mity poor, but gib you de berry best I hab."
He locked my boat in a rickety old storehouse,
and gave me to understand "dat niggers will
steal de berry breff from a man's mouff."
He took me to his home, and soon showed me
how he managed "de niggers." His wife sat
silently by the fire. He ordered her to "pound
de rice;" and she threw a quantity of unhulled
rice into a wooden mortar three feet high planted
in the ground in front of the shanty. Then, with
an enormous pestle, the black woman pounded
the grains until the hulls were removed, when,
seating herself upon the floor of the dark, smoky
cabin, she winnowed the rice with her breath,
while her long, slim fingers caught and removed
all the specks of dirt from the mass. It was
cooked as the Chinese cook it—not to a glutinous
mass, as we of the north prepare it—but
each grain was dry and entire. Then eggs and
bacon were prepared; not by the woman, but by
the son, a lad of fourteen years.
All these movements were superintended by
old Seba, who sat looking as dark and as solemn
and as learned as an associate judge on the
bench of a New Jersey county court. On the
blackest of tables, minus a cloth, the well-cooked
food was placed for the stranger. As soon as
my meal was finished, every member of the family
made a dash for the fragments, and the board
was cleared in a wonderfully short space of time.
Then we gathered round the great, black-mouthed
fireplace, and while the bright coals of
live-oak spread a streak of light through the
darkness, black men and black women stole into
the room until everything from floor to ceiling,
from door to chimney-place, seemed to be growing
blacker and blacker, and I felt as black as
my surroundings. The scant clothing of the
men only half covered their shiny, ebony skins.
The whole company preserved a dignified silence,
which was occasionally broken by deep
sighs coming from the women in reply to a half-whispered
"All de way from de norf in a paper
canno—bless de Lord! bless de Lord!"
This dull monotony was broken by the entrance
of a young negro who, having made a
passage in a sloop to Charleston through Bull's
Bay, was looked upon as a great traveller, and
to him were referred disputes upon nautical matters.
He had not yet seen the boat, but he proceeded
to tell the negroes present all about it.
He first bowed to me with a "How'dy, how'dy,
cap'n," and then struck an attitude in the middle
of the floor. Upon this natural orator Seba Gillings'
dignity had no effect—was he not a travelled
man?
His exordium was: "How fur you cum, sar?"
I replied, about fourteen hundred miles. "Fourteen
hundred miles!" he roared; "duz you
knows how much dat is, honnies? it's jes one
tousand four hundred miles." All the women
groaned out, "Bless de Lord! bless de Lord!"
and clapped their shrivelled hands in ecstasy.
The little black tried to run his fingers through
his short, woolly hair as he continued: "What is
dis yere world a-coming to? Now, yous ere
folks, did ye's eber hear de likes o' dis—a
paper boat?" To which the crones replied,
clapping their hands, "Bless de Lord! bless de
Lord! Only the Yankee-mens up norf can
make de paper boats. Bless de Lord!"
"And what," continued the orator, "and what
will the Yankee-mens do next? Dey duz ebery
ting. Can dey bring a man back agen? Can
dey bring a man back to bref?" "No! no!"
howled the women; "only de Lord can bring a
man back agen—no Yankee-mens can do dat.
Bless de Lord! bless de Lord!" "And what sent
dis Yankee-man one tousand four hundred miles
in his paper boat?" "De Lord! de Lord!
bless de Lord!" shouted the now highly excited
women, violently striking the palms of their
hands together.
"And why," went on this categorical negro,
"did de Lord send him down souf in de paper
boat?" "Kase he couldn't hab cum in de paper
boat ef de Lord hadn't a-sent him. O, bless de
Lord! bless de Lord!" "And what duz he call
his paper boat?" "Maria Theresa," I replied.
"Maria Truss Her," cried the orator. "He calls
her Maria Truss Her. Berry good, berry good
name; kase he truss his life in her ebry day, and
dat's why he calls his little boat Truss Her.
Yes, de Yankee-mans makes de gunboats and
de paper boats. Has de gemmin from de norf
any bacca for dis yere chile?"
As the women had become very piously inclined,
and were in just the state of nervous
excitement to commence "de shoutings," old
Uncle Seba rudely informed them that "de Yankee-mans
wants sleep," and cleared the room of
the crowd, to my great relief, for the state of the
atmosphere was beyond description. Seba had
a closet where he kept onions, muskrat skins,
and other pieces of personal property. He now
set his wife to sweeping it out, and I spread my
clean blankets with a sigh upon the black floor,
knowing I should carry away in the morning more
than I had brought into Seba's dwelling.
I will not now expatiate upon the small annoyances
of travel; but to the canoeist who may
follow the southern watercourses traversed by
the paper canoe, I would quietly say, "Keep
away from cabins of all kinds, and you will by
so doing travel with a light heart and even
temper."
When I cast up my account with old Seba
the next morning, he said that by trading the
rice he raised he could obtain "bout ebbry ting
he wanted, 'cept rum." Rum was his medicine.
So long as he kept a little stowed away, he
admitted he was often sick. Having been destitute
of cash, and consequently of rum for some
time, he acknowledged his state of health remarkable;
and he was a model of strength and
manly development. All the other negroes were
dwarfish-looking specimens, while their hair was
so very short that it gave them the appearance
of being bald.
When the canoe was taken out of the storehouse
to be put into the canal, these half-naked,
ebony-skinned creatures swarmed about it like
bees. Not a trace of white blood could be detected
in them. Each tried to put a finger upon
the boat. They seemed to regard it as a Fetich;
and, I believe, had it been placed upon an end
they would have bowed down and paid their
African devotions to it. Only the oldest ones
could speak English well enough to be understood.
The youths chattered in African tongue,
and wore talismans about their necks. They
were, to say the least, verging on barbarism.
The experience gathered among the blacks of
other lands impressed me with the well-founded
belief, that in more than one place in the south
would the African Fetich be set up and worshipped
before long, unless the church bestirs
herself to look well to her home missions.
In all my travels, outside of the cities, in the
south it has not been my good fortune to find an
educated white man preaching to negroes, yet
everywhere the poor blacks gather in the log-cabin,
or rudely constructed church, to listen to
ignorant preachers of their own color. The
blind leading the blind.
A few men of negro extraction, with white
blood in their veins, not any more negro than
white man, consequently not negroes in the true
sense of the word, are sent from the negro
colleges of the south to lecture northern congregations
upon the needs of their race; and these
one-quarter, or perhaps three-quarters, white
men are, with their intelligence, and sometimes
brilliant oratory, held up as true types of the
negro race by northerners; while there is, in
fact, as much difference between the pure-blooded
negro of the rice-field and this false
representative of "his needs," as can well be
imagined.
An Irishman, just from the old country, listened
one evening to the fascinating eloquence
of a mulatto freedman. The good Irishman had
never seen a pure-blooded black man. The orator
said, "I am only half a black man. My
mother was a slave, my father a white planter."
"Be jabbers," shouted the excited Irishman,
who was charmed with the lecturer, "if you are
only half a nigger, what must a whole one be
like!"
The blacks were kind and civil, as they usually
are when fairly treated. They stood upon the
dike and shouted unintelligible farewells as I
descended the canal to Alligator Creek. This
thoroughfare soon carried me on its salt-water
current to the sea; for I missed a narrow entrance
to the marshes, called the Eye of the
Needle (a steamboat thoroughfare), and found
myself upon the calm sea, which pulsated in
long swells. To the south was the low island
of Cape Roman, which, like a protecting arm,
guarded the quiet bay behind it. The marshes
extended from the main almost to the cape,
while upon the edge of the rushy meadows, upon
an island just inside of the cape, rose the tower
of Roman Light.
This was the first time my tiny shell had
floated upon the ocean. I coasted the sandy
beach of the muddy lowlands, towards the light-house,
until I found a creek debouching from
the marsh, which I entered, and from one watercourse
to another, without a chart, found my
way at dusk into Bull's Bay. The sea was rolling
in and breaking upon the shore, which I was
forced to hug closely, as the old disturbers of my
peace, the porpoises, were visible, fishing in
numbers. To escape the dangerous raccoon
oyster reefs of the shoal water the canoe was
forced into a deeper channel, when the lively
porpoises chased the boat and drove me back
again on to the sharp-lipped shells. It was fast
growing dark, and no place of refuge nearer
than the upland, a long distance across the soft
marsh, which was even now wet with the sea.
The rough water of the sound, the oyster reefs
which threatened to pierce my boat, and a coast
which would be submerged by the next flood-tide,
all seemed to conspire against me. Suddenly
my anxiety was relieved, and gratitude
filled my heart, as the tall masts of a schooner
rose out of the marshes not far from the upland,
telling me that a friendly creek was near at hand.
Its wide mouth soon opened invitingly before
me, and I rowed towards the beautiful craft
anchored in its current, the trim rig of which
plainly said—the property of the United States.
An officer stood on the quarterdeck watching
my approach through his glass; and, as I was
passing the vessel, a sailor remarked to his
mates, "That is the paper canoe. I was in Norfolk,
last December, when it reached the Elizabeth
River."
The officer kindly hailed me, and offered me
the hospitality of the Coast-Survey schooner
"Caswell." In the cosiest of cabins, Mr. W. H.
Dennis, with his co-laborers Messrs. Ogden and
Bond, with their interesting conversation soon
made me forget the discomforts of the last three
days spent in the muddy flats among the lowland
negroes. From poor, kind Seba Gillings' black
cabin-floor, to the neat state-room, with its snowy
sheets and clean towels, where fresh, pure water
could be used without stint, was indeed a transition.
The party expected to complete their
work as far as Charleston harbor before the
season closed.
The Sunday spent on the "Caswell" greatly
refreshed me. On Saturday evening Mr. Dennis
traced upon a sheet of paper my route through
the interior coast watercourses to Charleston
harbor; and I left the pretty schooner on Monday,
fully posted for my voyage. The tide commenced
flooding at eleven a. m., and the flats
soon afforded me water for their passage in the
vicinity of the shore. Heavy forests covered
the uplands, where a few houses were visible.
Bull's Island, with pines and a few cabbage palms,
was on my left as I reached the entrance of the
southern thoroughfare at the end of the bay.
Here, in the intricacies of creeks and passages
through the islands, and made careless by the
possession of Mr. Dennis' chart, I several times
blundered into the wrong course; and got no
further that afternoon than Price's Inlet, though
I rowed more than twenty miles. Some eight
miles of the distance rowed was lost by ascending
and descending creeks by mistake.
After a weary day's work shelter was found
in a house close by the sea, on the shores of
Price's Inlet; where, in company with a young
fisherman, who was in the employ of Mr. Magwood,
of Charleston, I slept upon the floor in my
blankets. Charles Hucks, the fisherman, asserted
that three albino deer were killed on Caper's
Island the previous winter. Two were shot by
a negro, while he killed the third. Messrs.
Magwood, Terry, and Noland, of Charleston, one
summer penned beside the water one thousand
old terrapin, to hold them over for the winter
season. These "diamond-backs" would consume
five bushels of shrimps in one hour when
fed. A tide of unusual height washed out the
terrapins from their "crawl," and with them disappeared
all anticipated results of the experiment.
The next day, Caper's Island and Inlet, Dewees'
Inlet, Long Island, and Breach Inlet were
successively passed, on strong tidal currents.
Sullivan's Island is separated from Long Island
by Breach Inlet. While following the creeks in
the marshes back of Sullivan's Island, the compact
mass of buildings of Moultrieville, at its
western end, at the entrance of Charleston harbor,
rose imposingly to view.
The gloomy mantle of darkness was settling
over the harbor as the paper canoe stole quietly
into its historic waters. Before me lay the quiet
bay, with old Fort Sumter rising from the watery
plain like a spectral giant, as though to remind
one that this had been the scene of mighty
struggles. The tranquil waters softly rippled a
response to the touch of my oars; all was peace
and quiet here, where, only a few short years
before, the thunder of cannon woke a thousand
echoes, and the waves were stained with the lifeblood
of America,—where war, with her iron
throat, poured out destruction, and God's creatures,
men, made after his own image, destroyed
each other ruthlessly, having never, in all
that civilization had done for them, discovered
any other way of settling their difficulties than
by this wholesale murder.
The actors in this scene were scattered now;
they had returned to the farm, the workshop,
the desk, and the pulpit. The old flag again
floated upon the ramparts of Sumter, and a government
was trying to reconstruct itself, so that
the Great Republic should become more thoroughly
a government of the people, founded
upon equal rights to all men.
A sharp, scraping sound under my boat roused
me from my revery, for I had leaned upon my
oars while the tide had carried me slowly but
surely upon the oyster-reefs, from which I escaped
with some slight damage to my paper
shell. Newspaper reading had impressed upon
me a belief that the citizens of the city which
played so important a part in the late civil war
might not treat kindly a Massachusetts man. I
therefore decided to go up to the city upon the
ferry-boat for the large mail which awaited my
arrival at the Charleston post-office, after receiving
which I intended to return to Mount
Pleasant, and cross the bay to the entrance of
the southern watercourses, leaving the city as
quietly as I entered it.
My curiosity was, however, aroused to see
how, under the new reconstruction rule, things
were conducted in the once proud city of
Charleston. As I stood at the window of the
post-office delivery, and inquired through the
narrow window for my letters, a heavy shadow
seemed to fall upon me as the head of a negro
appeared. The black post-office official's features
underwent a sudden change as I pronounced
my name, and, while a warm glow of
affection lighted up his dark face, he thrust his
whole arm through the window, and grasped my
hand with a vigorous shake in the most friendly
manner, as though upon his shoulders rested the
good name of the people.
Reception at Charleston Post-Office.
"Welcome to Charleston, Mr. B——, welcome
to our beautiful city," he exclaimed. So this
was Charleston under reconstruction.
After handing me my mail, the postmaster
graciously remarked, "Our rule is to close the
office at five o'clock p. m., but if you are belated
any day, tap at the door, and I will attend you."
This was my first welcome to Charleston; but
before I could return to my quarters at Mount
Pleasant, members of the Chamber of Commerce,
the Carolina Club, and others, pressed
upon me kind attentions and hospitalities, while
Mr. James L. Frazer, of the South Carolina Regatta
Association, sent for the Maria Theresa,
and placed it in charge of the wharfinger of the
Southern Wharf, where many ladies and gentlemen
visited it.
When I left the old city, a few days later, I
blushed to think how I had doubted these people,
whose reputation for hospitality to strangers had
been world-wide for more than half a century.
While here I was the guest of Rev. G. R.
Brackett, the well-loved pastor of one of
Charleston's churches. It was with feelings of
regret I turned my tiny craft towards untried
waters, leaving behind me the beautiful city of
Charleston, and the friends who had so kindly
cared for the lonely canoeist.
