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.
CHAPTER XII. FROM CHARLESTON TO SAVANNAH, GEORGIA.
THE INTERIOR WATER ROUTE TO JEHOSSEE ISLAND. — GOVERNOR AIKEN'S MODEL RICE PLANTATION. — LOST IN THE HORNS. — ST. HELENA SOUND. — LOST IN THE NIGHT. — THE PHANTOM SHIP. — A FINLANDER'S WELCOME. — A NIGHT ON THE EMPEROR S OLD YACHT. — THE PHOSPHATE MINES. — COOSAW AND BROAD RIVERS. — PORT ROYAL SOUND AND CALIBOQUE SOUND. — CUFFY 'S HOME. — ARRIVAL IN GEORGIA. — RECEPTIONS AT GREENWICH SHOOTING-PARK.
Captain N. L. Coste, and several other Charleston pilots, drew and presented to me charts of the route to be followed by the paper canoe through the Sea Island passages, from the Ashley to the Savannah River, as some of the smaller watercourses near the upland were not, in 1875, upon any engraved chart of the Coast Survey.
Ex-Governor William Aiken, whose rice plantation on Jehossee Island was considered, before the late war, the model one of the south, invited me to pass the following Sunday with him upon his estate, which was about sixty-five miles from Charleston, and along one of the interior water routes to Savannah. He proposed to leave his city residence and travel by land, while I paddled my canoe southward to meet him. The genial editor of the "News and Courier" promised to notify the people of my departure, and have the citizens assembled to give me a South Carolina adieu. To avoid this publicity, — so kindly meant, — I quietly left the city from the south side on Friday, February 12th, and ascended the Ashley to Wappoo Creek, on the opposite bank of the river.
A steamboat sent me a screaming salute as the mouth of the Wappoo was reached, which made me feel that, though in strange waters, friends were all around me. I was now following one of the salt-water, steamboat passages through the great marshes of South Carolina. From Wappoo Creek I took the "Elliot Cut" into the broad Stono River, from behind the marshes of which forests rose upon the low bluffs of the upland, and rowed steadily on to Church Flats, where Wide Awake, with its landing and store, nestled on the bank.
A little further on the tides divided, one ebbing through the Stono to the sea, the other towards the North Edisto. "New Cut" connects Church Flats with Wadmelaw Sound, a sheet of water not over two miles in width and the same distance in length. From the sound the Wadmelaw River runs to the mouth of the Dahoo. Vessels drawing eight and a half feet of water can pass on full tides from Charleston over the course I was following to the North Edisto River.
Leaving Wadmelaw Sound, a deep bend of the river was entered, when the bluffs of Enterprise Landing, with its store and the ruins of a burnt saw-mill, came into view on the left. Having rowed more than thirty miles from the Ashley, and finding that the proprietor of Enterprise, a Connecticut gentleman, had made preparations to entertain me, this day of pleasant journeying ended.
The Cardinal-bird was carolling his mating song when the members of this little New England colony watched my departure down the Wadmelaw the next morning. The course was for the most part over the submerged phosphate beds of South Carolina, where the remains of extinct species were now excavated, furnishing food for the worn-out soils of America and Europe, and interesting studies and speculations for men of science. The Dahoo River was reached soon after leaving Enterprise. Here the North Edisto, a broad river, passes the mouth of the Dahoo, in its descent to the sea, which is about ten miles distant.
For two miles along the Dahoo the porpoises gave me strong proof of their knowledge of the presence of the paper canoe by their rough gambols, but being now in quiet inland waters, I could laugh at these strange creatures as they broke from the water around the boat. At four o'clock P. M. the extensive marshes of Jehossee Island were reached, and I approached the village of the plantation through a short canal. Out of the rice-fields of rich, black alluvium rose an area of higher land, upon which were situated the mansion and village of Governor Aiken, where he, in 1830, commenced his duties as rice-planter. A hedge of bright green casino surrounded the well-kept garden, within which magnolias and live-oaks enveloped the solid old house, screening it with their heavy foliage from the strong winds of the ocean, while flowering shrubs of all descriptions added their bright and vivid coloring to the picturesque beauty of the scene.
The governor had arrived at Jehossee before me, and Saturday being pay-day, the faces of the negroes were wreathed in smiles. Here, in his quiet island home, I remained until Monday with this most excellent man and patriot, whose soul had been tried as by fire during the disturbances caused by the war.
As we sat together in that room where, in years gone by, Governor Aiken had entertained his northern guests, with Englishmen of noble blood, a room full of reminiscences both pleasant and painful, — my kind host freely told me the story of his busy life, which sounded like a tale of romance. He had tried to stay the wild storm of secession when the war-cloud hung gloomily over his state. It broke, and his unheeded warnings were drowned in the thunders of the political tempest that swept over the fair South. Before the war he owned one thousand slaves. He organized schools to teach his negroes to read and write. The improvement of their moral condition was his great study.
The life he had entered upon, though at first distasteful, had been forced upon him, and he met his peculiar responsibilities with a true Christian desire to benefit all within his reach. When a young man, having returned from the tour of Europe, his father presented him with Jehossee Island, an estate of five thousand acres, around which it required four stout negro oarsmen to row him in a day. "Here," said the father to the future governor of South Carolina, as he presented the domain to his son, — "here are the means; now go to work and develop them."
William Aiken applied himself industriously to the task of improving the talents given him. His well-directed efforts bore good fruit, as year after year Jehossee Island, from a half submerged, sedgy, boggy waste, grew into one of the finest rice-plantations in the south. The new lord of the manor ditched the marshes, and walled in his new rice-fields with dikes, to keep out the freshets from the upland and the tides from the ocean, perfecting a complete system of drainage and irrigation. He built comfortable quarters for his slaves, and erected a church and schoolhouse for their use. From the original two hundred and eighty acres of cultivated rice land, the new proprietor developed the wild morass into sixteen hundred acres of rice-fields, and six hundred acres of vegetable, corn, and provender producing land.
For several seasons prior to the war, Jehossee yielded a rice crop which sold for seventy thousand dollars, and netted annually fifty thousand dollars income to the owner. At that time Governor Aiken had eight hundred and seventy three Slaves on the island, and about one hundred working as mechanics, &c., in Charleston. The eight hundred and seventy-three Jehossee slaves, men, women, and children, furnished a working force of three hundred for the rice-fields.
Mr. Aiken would not tolerate the loose matrimonial ways of negro life, but compelled his slaves to accept the marriage ceremony; and herein lay one of his chief difficulties, for, to whatever cause we attribute it, the fact remains the same, namely, that the ordinary negro has no sense of morality. After all the attempts made on this plantation to improve the moral nature of these men and women, Governor Aiken, during a yellow-fever season in Savannah after the war, while visiting the poor sufferers, intent upon charitable works, found in the lowest quarter of the city, sunk in the most abject depths of vice, men and women who had once been good servants on his plantations.
In old times Jehossee was a happy place for master and for slave. The governor rarely locked the door of his mansion. The family plate, valued at fifteen thousand dollars, was stored in a chest in a room on the ground-floor of the house, which had for its occupants, during four months of the year, two or three negro servants. Though all the negroes at the quarters, which were only a quarter of a mile from the mansion, knew the valuable contents of the chest, it was never disturbed. They stole small things, but seemed incapable of committing a burglary.
When the Union army marched through another part of South Carolina, where Governor Aiken had buried these old family heirlooms and had added to the original plate thirty thousand dollars' worth of his own purchasing, the soldiers dug up this treasure-trove, and forty-five thousand dollars' worth of fine silver went to enrich the spoils of the Union army. Soon after, three thousand eight hundred bottles of fine old wines, worth from eight to nine dollars a bottle, were dug up and destroyed by a Confederate officer's order, to prevent the Union army from capturing them. Thus was plundered an old and revered governor of South Carolina — one who was a kind neighbor, a true patriot, and a Christian gentleman.
The persecutions of the owner of Jehossee did not, however, terminate with the war; for when the struggle was virtually ended, and the fair mansion of the rice-plantation retained its heirlooms and its furniture, Beaufort, of South Carolina, was still under the influence of the Freedman's Bureau; and when it was whispered that Aiken's house was full of nice old furniture, and that a few faithful servants of the good old master were its only guards, covetous thoughts at once stirred the evil minds of those who were the representatives of law and order. This house was left almost without protection. The war was over. South Carolina had bent her proud head in agony over her burned plantations and desolate homes. The victorious army was now proclaiming peace, and generous treatment to a fallen foe. Then to what an almost unimaginable state of demoralization must some of the freedmen's protectors have fallen, when they sent a gunboat to Jehossee Island, and rifled the old house of all its treasures!
To-day, the governor's favorite sideboard stands in the house of a citizen of Boston, as a relic of the war. O, people of the north, hold no longer to your relics of the war, stolen from the firesides of the south! Restore them to their owners, or else bury them out of the sight of your children, that they may not be led to believe that the war for the preservation of the Great Republic was a war for plunder; — else did brave men fight, and good women pray in vain. Away with stolen pianos, "captured" sideboards, and purloined silver! What but this petty plundering could be expected of men who robbed by wholesale the poor negro, to protect whose rights they were sent south?
The great political party of the north became the pledged conservator of the black man's rights, and established a Freedman's Bureau, and Freedman's banks to guard his humble earnings. All know something of the workings of those banks; and to everlasting infamy must be consigned the names of many of those conducting them, — men who robbed every one of these depositories of negro savings, and left the poor, child-like freedman in a physical state of destitution, and in a perfect bewilderment of mind as to who his true friend really was.
A faithful negro of Jehossee Island was but one among thousands of such cases. While the tumult of war vexed the land, the faithful negro overseer remained at his post to guard his late master's property, supporting himself by the manufacture of salt, and living in the most frugal manner to be able to "lay by" a sum for his old age. Having saved five hundred dollars, he deposited them in the nearest Freedman's bank, which, though fathered by the United States government, failed; and the now destitute negro found himself stripped in the same moment of his hard-earned savings, and his confidence in his new protectors.
As the war of the rebellion was slowly drawing to its close, Mr. Lincoln's kind heart was drawn towards his erring countrymen, and he made a list of the names of the wisest and best men of the south, who, not having taken an active part in the strife, might be intrusted with the task of bringing back the unruly states to their constitutional relations with the national government. Governor Aiken was informed that his name was upon that list; and he would gladly have accepted the onerous position, and labored in the true interests of the whole people, but the pistol of an assassin closed the life of the President, whose generous plans of reconstruction were never realized.
In the birth of our new Centennial let us eschew the political charlatan, and bring forward our statesmen to serve and govern a people, who, to become a unit of strength, must ever bear in mind the words of the great southern statesman, who said he knew "no north, no south, no east, no west; but one undivided country."
On Monday, at ten A. M., two negroes assisted me to launch my craft from the river's bank at the mouth of the canal, for the tide was very low. As I settled myself for a long pull at the oars, the face of one of the blacks was seemingly rent in twain, as a huge mouth opened, and a pair of strong lungs sent forth these parting words: "Bully for Massachusetts!"
"How did you know I came from
Massachusetts?" I called out from the river.
"I knows de cuts ob dem. I suffered at Fort
Wagner. Dis chile knows Massachusetts."
Two miles further on, Bull Creek served me as a "cut-off," and half an hour after entering it the tide was flooding against me. When Goat Island Creek was passed on the left hand, knots of pine forests rose picturesquely in places out of the bottom-lands, and an hour later, at Bennett's Point, on the right, I found the watercourse a quarter of a mile in width.
The surroundings were of a lovely nature during this day's journey. Here marshes, diversified by occasional hammocks of timber dotting their uninteresting wastes; there humble habitations of whites and blacks appearing at intervals in the forest growth. As I was destitute of a finished chart of the Coast Survey, after rowing along one side of Hutchinson's Island I became bewildered in the maze of creeks which penetrate the marshes that lie between Bennett's Point and the coast.
Making a rough topographical sketch of the country as I descended Hutchinson's Creek, or Big River, — the latter appellation being the most appropriate, as it is a very wide watercourse, — I came upon a group of low islands, and found upon one of them a plantation which had been abandoned to the negroes, and the little bluff upon which two or three rickety buildings were situated was the last land which remained unsubmerged during a high tide between the plantation and the sea.
I was now in a quandary. I had left the hospitable residence of Governor Aiken at ten o'clock A. M., when I should have departed at sunrise in order to have had time to enter and pass through St. Helena Sound before night came on. The prospect of obtaining shelter was indeed dismal. Just at this time a loud shout from the negroes on shore attracted my attention, and I rested upon my oars, while a boat-load of women and children paddled out to me.
"Is dat de little boat?" they asked, viewing my craft with curious eyes. "And is dat boat made of paper?" they continued, showing that negro runners had posted the people, even in these solitary regions, of the approach of the paper canoe. I questioned these negro women about the route, but each gave a different answer as to the passage through the Horns to St. Helena Sound. Hurrying on through tortuous creeks, the deserted tract called "the Horns" was entered, and until sunset I followed one short stream after another, to its source in the reedy plain, constantly retracing the route, with the tide not yet ebbing strong enough to show me a course to the sound. Presently it ebbed more rapidly, and I followed the tide from one intricacy to another, but never found the principal thoroughfare.
While I was enveloped in reeds, and at a loss which way to go, the soft ripple of breaking waves struck my ear like sweet music. The sea was telling me of its proximity. Carefully balancing myself, I stood up in the cranky canoe, and peering over the grassy thickets, saw before me the broad waters of Helena Sound. The fresh salt breeze from the ocean struck upon my forehead, and nerved me to a renewal of my efforts to get within a region of higher land, and to a place of shelter.
The ebbing tide was yet high, and through the forest of vegetation, and over the submerged coast, I pushed the canoe into the sound. Now I rowed as though for my life, closely skirting the marshes, and soon entered waters covered by a chart in my possession. My course was to skirt the coast of the sound from where I had entered it, and cross the mouths of the Combahee and Bull rivers to the entrance of the broad Coosaw. This last river I would ascend seven miles to the first upland, and camp thereon until morning. The tide was now against me, and the night was growing darker, as the faithful craft was forced along the marshes four miles to the mouth of the Combahee River, which I had to ascend half a mile to get rid of a shoal of frisky porpoises, who were fishing in the current.
Then descending it on the opposite shore, I rowed two miles further in the dark, but for half an hour previous to my reaching the wide debouchure of Bull River, some enormous blackfish surged about me in the tideway and sounded their nasal calls, while their more demonstrative porpoise neighbors leaped from the water in the misty atmosphere, and so alarmed me and occupied my attention, that instead of crossing to the Coosaw River, I unwittingly ascended the Bull, and was soon lost in the contours of the river. As I hugged the marshy borders of the stream to escape the strong current of its channel, and rowed on and on in the gloom, eagerly scanning the high, sedge-fringed flats to find one little spot of firm upland upon which I might land my canoe and obtain a resting-spot for myself for the night, the feeling that I was lost was not the most cheerful to be imagined. In the thin fog which arose from the warm water into the cool night air, objects on the marshes assumed fantastical shapes. A few reeds, taller than the rest, had the appearance of trees twenty feet high. So real did these unreal images seem, that I drove my canoe against the soft, muddy bank, repeatedly prompted to land in what seemed a copse of low trees, but in every instance I was deceived. Still I pulled up that mysterious river, ignorant at the time of even its name, praying only for one little spot of upland where I might camp.
While thus employed, I peered over my shoulder into the gloom, and beheld what seemed to be a vision; for, out of a cloud of mist rose the skeleton lines of a large ship, with all its sails furled to the yards. "A ship at anchor, and in this out-of-the-way place!" I ejaculated, scarcely believing my eyes; but when I pointed the canoe towards it, and again looked over my shoulder, the vision of hope was gone.
Again I saw tall masts cutting through the mists, but the ship's hull could not be distinguished, and as I rowed towards the objects, first the lower masts disappeared, then the topmasts dissolved, and later, the topgallant and royal masts faded away. For half an hour I rowed and rowed for that mysterious vessel, which was veiled and unveiled to my sight. Never did so spectral an object haunt or thwart me. It seemed to change its position on the water, as well as in the atmosphere, and I was too busily employed in trying to reach it to discover in the darkness that the current, which I could not distinguish from smooth water, was whirling me down stream as fast as I would approach the weird vessel.
Drawing once more from the current, I followed the marsh until the canoe was opposite the anchorage of a real ship; then, with hearty pulls, I shot around its stern, and shouted: "Ship ahoy!"
No one answered the hail. The vessel looked like a man-of-war, but not of American build. Not a light gleamed from her ports, not a footfall came from her decks. She seemed to be deserted in the middle of the river, surrounded by a desolate waste of marshes. The current gurgled and sucked about her run, as the ebbtide washed her black hull on its way to the sea. The spectacle seemed now even more mysterious than when, mirage-like, it peered forth from a cloud of mist. But it was real, and not fantastic. Another hail, louder than the first, went forth into the night air, and penetrated to the ship's forecastle, for a sailor answered my call, and reported to the captain in the cabin the presence of a boat at the ship's side.
A quick, firm tread sounded upon the deck; then, with a light bound, a powerfully-built young man landed upon the high rail of the vessel. He peered down from his stately ship upon the little speck which floated upon the gurgling current; then, with a voice "filled with the fogs of the ocean," he thundered forth, as though he were hailing a man-of-war: "What boat's that?"
"Paper canoe Maria Theresa," I replied, in as foggy a voice as I could assume.
"Where from, and where bound?" again roared the captain.
"From Quebec, Canada, and bound to sleep on board your vessel, if I can ever get up there," I politely responded, in a more subdued voice, for I soon discovered that nature had never intended me for a fog-trumpet.
"Ah, is it you?" cheerily responded the
captain, suddenly dispensing with all his fogginess;
"I've been looking for you this long time. Got a
Charleston paper on board; your trip all in it.
Come up, and break a bottle of wine with me."
"All hands" came from the forecastle, and Finland mates and Finland sailors, speaking both English and Russian, crowded to the rail to receive the paper canoe, which had first been described to them by English newspapers when the vessel lay in a British port, awaiting the charter-party which afterwards sent them to Bull River, South Carolina, for a load of phosphates.
The jolly crew lowered buntlines and clewlines, to which I attached my boat's stores. These were hoisted up the high sides of the ship, and, after bending on a line to the bow and stern rings of the canoe, I ascended by the ladder, while Captain Johs. Bergelund and his mates claimed the pleasure of landing the paper canoe on the deck of the Rurik. The tiny shell looked very small as she rested on the broad, white decks of the emperor of Russia's old steam yacht, which bore the name of the founder of the Russian empire. Though now a bark and not a steamer, though a freighter and not a royal yacht, the Rurik looked every inch a government vessel, for her young captain, with a sailor's pride, kept her in a thorough state of cleanliness and order. We went to supper. The captain, his mates, and the stranger gathered around the board, while the generous sailor brought out his curious bottles and put them by the side of the still more curious dishes of food.
All my surroundings were those of the country of the midnight sun, and I should have felt more bewildered than when in the fog I viewed and chased this spectral-looking ship, had not Captain Bergelund, in most excellent English, entertained me with a flow of conversation which put me at my ease. He discoursed of Finland, where lakes covered the country from near Abo, its chief city, to the far north, where the summer days are "nearly all night long."
Painting in high colors the delights of his native land, he begged me to visit it. Finally, as midnight drew near, this genial sailor insisted upon putting me in his own comfortable stateroom, while he slept upon a lounge in the cabin.
One mile above the Rurik's anchorage was the phosphate-mill of the Pacific Company, which was supplying Captain Bergelund, by lighters, with his freight of unground fertilizer.
The next morning I took leave of the Rurik, but, instead of descending the Bull River to the Coosaw, I determined to save time by crossing the peninsula between the two rivers by means of two short creeks which were connected at their sources by a very short canal near "the mines" of the Phosphate Company. When I entered Horse Island Creek, at eleven o'clock, the tide was on the last of the ebb, and I sat in the canoe a long time awaiting the flood to float me up the wide ditch, which would conduct me to the creek that emptied into the Coosaw. Upon the banks of the canal three hours were lost waiting for the tide to give me one foot of water, when I rowed into the second watercourse, and late in the afternoon entered the wide Coosaw. The two creeks and the connecting canal are called the Haulover Creek.
As I turned up the Coosaw, and skirted the now submerged marshes of its left bank, two dredging-machines were at work up the river raising the remains of the marine monsters of antiquity. The strong wind and swashing seas being in my favor, the canoe soon arrived opposite the spot of upland I had so longed to reach the previous night.
This was Chisolm's Landing, back of which were the phosphate works of the Coosaw Mine Company. The inspector of phosphates, Mr. John Hunn, offered me the hospitality of Alligator Hall, where he and some of the gentlemen employed by the company resided in bachelor retirement. My host described a mammal's tooth that weighed nearly fourteen pounds, which had been taken from a phosphate mine; it had been sent to a public room at Beaufort, South Carolina. A fossil shark's tooth, weighing four and a half pounds, was also found, and a learned ichthyologist has asserted that the owner of this remarkable relic of the past must have been one hundred feet in length.
Beaufort was near at hand, and could be easily reached by entering Brickyard Creek, the entrance of which was on the right bank of the Coosaw, nearly opposite Chisolm's Landing. It was nearly six miles by this creek to Beaufort, and from that town to Port Royal Sound, by following Beaufort River, was a distance of eleven miles. The mouth of Beaufort River is only two miles from the sea. Preferring to follow a more interior water route than the Beaufort one, the canoe was rowed up the Coosaw five miles to Whale Branch, which is crossed by the Port Royal railroad bridge. Whale Branch, five miles in length, empties into Broad River, which I descended thirteen miles, to the lower end of Daw Island, on its right bank. Here, in this region of marshy shores, the Chechessee River and the Broad River mingle their strong currents in Port Royal Sound. It was dusk when the sound was entered from the extreme end of Daw Island, where it became necessary to cross immediately to Skull Creek, at Hilton Head Island, or go into camp for the night.
I looked down the sound six miles to the broad Atlantic, which was sending in clouds of mist on a fresh breeze. I gazed across the mouth of the Chechessee, and the sound at the entrance of the port of refuge. I desired to traverse nearly three miles of this rough water. I would gladly have camped, hut the shore I was about to leave offered to submerge me with the next high water. No friendly hammock of trees could be seen as I glided from the shadow of the high rushes of Daw Island. Circumstances decided the point in debate, and I rowed rapidly into the sound. The canoe had not gone half a mile when the Chechessee River opened fully to view, and a pretty little hammock, with two or three shanties beneath its trees, could be plainly seen on Daw's Island.
It was now too late to return and ascend the river to the hammock, for the sound was disturbed by the freshening breeze from the sea blowing against the ebb-tide, which was increased in power by the outflowing flume of water from the wide Chechessee. It required all the energy I possessed to keep the canoe from being overrun by the swashy, sharp-pointed seas. Once or twice I thought my last struggle for life had come, but a merciful Power gave me the strength and coolness that this trying ordeal required, and I somehow weathered the dangerous oyster reefs above Skull Creek, and landed at "Seabrook Plantation," upon Hilton Head Island, near two or three old houses, one of which was being fitted up as a store by Mr. Kleim, of the First New York Volunteers, who had lived on the island since 1861. Mr. Kleim took me to his bachelor quarters, where the wet cargo of the Maria Theresa was dried by the kitchen fireplace.
The next day, February 18, I left Seabrook and followed Skull Creek to Mackay's Creek, and, passing the mouth of May River, entered Calibogue Sound, where a sudden tempest arose and drove me into a creek which flowed out of the marshes of Bull Island. A few negro huts were discovered on a low mound of earth. The blacks told me their hammock was called Bird Island.
The tempest lasted all day, and as no shelter could be found on the creek, a darky hauled my canoe on a cart a couple of miles to Bull Creek, which enters into Cooper River, one of the watercourses I was to enter from Calibogue Sound. Upon reaching the wooded shores of Bull Creek, my carter introduced me to the head man of the settlement, a weazened-looking little old creature called Cuffy, who, though respectful in his demeanor to "de Yankee-mans," was cross and overbearing to the few families occupying the shanties in the magnificent grove of live-oaks which shaded them.
Cuffy's cook-house, or kitchen, which was a log structure measuring nine by ten feet, with posts only three feet high, was the only building which could be emptied of its contents for my accommodation. Our contract or lease was a verbal one, Cuffy's terms being "whateber de white man likes to gib an ole nigger." Cuffy cut a big switch, and sent in his "darter," a girl of about fourteen years, to clean out the shanty. When she did not move fast enough to suit the old man's wishes, he switched her over the shoulders till it excited my pity; but the girl seemed to take the beating as an every-day amusement, for it made no impression on her hard skull and thick skin.
After commencing to "keep house," the old women came to sell me eggs and beg for "bacca." They requested me never to throw away my coffee-grounds, as it made coffee "good 'nuf for black folks." I distributed some of my stores among them, and, after cutting rushes and boughs for my bed, turned in for the night.
These negroes had been raising Sea-Island cotton, but the price having declined to five cents a pound, they could not get twenty-five cents a day for their labor by cultivating it.
The fierce wind subsided before dawn, but a heavy fog covered the marshes and the creek. Cuffy's "settlement" turned out before sunrise to see me off; and the canoe soon reached the broad Cooper River, which I ascended in the misty darkness by following close to the left bank. Four miles up the Cooper River from Calibogue Sound there is a passage through the marshes from the Cooper to New River, which is called Ram's Horn Creek. On the right of its entrance a well-wooded hammock rises from the marsh, and is called Page Island. About midway between the two rivers and along this crooked thoroughfare is another piece of upland. called Pine Island, inhabited by the families of two boat-builders.
While navigating Cooper River, as the heavy mists rolled in clouds over the quiet waters, a sail-boat, rowed by negroes, emerged from the gloom and as suddenly disappeared. I shouted after them: "Please tell me the name of the next creek." A hoarse voice came back to me from the cloud: "Pull and be d—-d." Then all was; still as night again. To solve this seemingly uncourteous reply, so unusual in the south I consulted the manuscript charts which the Charleston pilots had kindly drawn for my use, and found that the negroes had spoken geographically as well as truthfully, for Pine Island Creek is known to the watermen as "Pull and be d—-d Creek," on account of its tortuous character, and chiefly because, as the tides head in it, if a boat enters it from one river with a favorable tide, it has a strong head current on the other side of the middle ground to oppose it. Thus pulling at the oars at some parts of the creek becomes hard work for the boatmen; hence this name, which, though profane, may be considered geographical.
After leaving the Cooper River, the watercourses to Savannah were discolored by red or yellow mud. From Pine Island I descended New River two miles and a half to Wall's Cut, which is only a quarter of a mile in length, and through which I entered Wright's River, following it a couple of miles to the broad, yellow, turbulent current of the Savannah.
My thoughts now naturally turned to the early days of steamboat enterprise, when this river, as well as the Hudson, was conspicuous; for though the steamer Savannah was not the first steam-propelled vessel which cut the waves of the Atlantic, she was the first steamer that ever crossed it. Let us examine historical data. Colonel John Stevens, of New York, built the steamboat Phoenix about the year 1808, and was prevented from using it upon the Hudson River by the Fulton and Livingston monopoly charter.
The Phoenix made an ocean voyage to the Delaware River. The first English venture was that of the steamer Caledonia, which made a passage to Holland in 1817. The London Times of May 11, 1819, printed in its issue of that date the following item:
"GREAT EXPERIMENT. — A new vessel of three hundred tons has been built at New York for the express purpose of carrying passengers across the Atlantic. She is to come to Liverpool direct."
This ship-rigged steamer was the "Savannah," and the bold projector of this experiment of sending a steamboat across the Atlantic was Daniel Dodd. The Savannah was built in New York, by Francis Ficket, for Mr. Dodd. Stephen Vail, of Morristown, New Jersey, built her engines, and on the 22d of August, 1818, she was launched, gliding gracefully into the element which was to bear her to foreign lands, there to be crowned with the laurels of success. On May 25th this purely American-built vessel left Savannah, and glided out from this waste of marshes, under the command of Captain Moses Rogers, with Stephen Rogers as navigator. The port of New London, Conn., had furnished these able seamen.
The steamer reached Liverpool June 20th, the passage having occupied twenty-six days, upon eighteen of which she had used her paddles. A son of Mr. Dodd once told me of the sensation produced by the arrival of a smoking vessel on the coast of Ireland, and how Lieutenant John Bowie, of the king's cutter Kite, sent a boat-load of sailors to board the Savannah to assist her crew to extinguish the fires of what his Majesty's officers supposed to be a burning ship.
The Savannah, after visiting Liverpool, continued her voyage on July 23d, and reached St. Petersburg in safety. Leaving the latter port on October 10th, this adventurous craft completed the round voyage upon her arrival at Savannah, November 30th.
I pulled up the Savannah until within five miles of the city, and then left the river on its south side, where old rice-plantations are first met, and entered St. Augustine Creek, which is the steamboat thoroughfare of the inland route to Florida. Just outside the city of Savannah, near its beautiful cemetery, where tall trees with their graceful drapery of Spanish moss screen from wind and sun the quiet resting-places of the dead, my canoe was landed, and stored in a building of the German Greenwich Shooting Park, where Mr. John Hellwig, in a most hospitable manner, cared for it and its owner.
While awaiting the arrival of letters at the Savannah post-office, many of the ladies of that beautiful city came out to see the paper canoe. They seemed to have the mistaken idea that my little craft had come from the distant Dominion of Canada over the Atlantic Ocean. They also looked upon the voyage of the paper canoe as a very sentimental thing, while the canoeist had found it an intensely practical affair, though occasionally relieved by incidents of romantic or amusing character. As the ladies clustered round the boat while it rested upon the centre-table of Mr. Hellwig's parlor, they questioned me freely.
"Tell us," they said, "what were your thoughts while you rowed upon the broad ocean in the lonely hours of night?"
Though unwilling to break their pleasing illusions, I was obliged to inform them that a sensible canoeist is usually enjoying his needed rest in some camp, or sleeping in some sheltered place, — under a roof if possible, — after it is too dark to travel in safety; and as to ocean travelling, the canoe had only once entered upon the Atlantic Ocean, and then through a mistake.
"But what subjects occupy your thoughts as you row, and row, and row all day by yourself; in this little ship?" a motherly lady inquired.
"To tell you honestly, ladies, I must say that when I am in shallow watercourses, with the tides usually ebbing at the wrong time for my convenience, I am so full of anxiety about getting wrecked on the reefs of sharp coon-oysters, that I am wishing myself in deep water; and when my route forces me into the deep water of sounds, and the surface becomes tossed into wild disorder by strong currents and stronger winds, and the porpoises pay me their little attentions, chasing the canoe, flapping their tails, and showing their sportive dispositions, I think longingly of those same shoal creeks, and wish I was once more in their shallow waters."
"We ladies have prayed for your safety," said a kind-looking German lady, "and we will pray that your voyage may have a happy and successful end."
When the ladies left, two Irish laborers, dressed in sombre black, with high hats worn with the air of dignity, examined the boat. There was an absence of the sparkle of fun usually seen in the Irish face, for this was a serious occasion. They did not see any romance or sentiment in the voyage, but took a broad, geographical view of the matter. They stood silently gazing at the canoe with the same air of solemnity they would have given a corpse. Then one addressed the other, as though the owner of the craft was entirely out of the hearing of their conversation.
Said No. 1, "And what did I tell ye, Pater?" "And so ye did," replied No. 2. "And didn't I say so?" continued No. 1. "Of course ye did; and wasn't me of the same mind, to be sure?" responded No.2. "Yes, I told ye as how it is the men of these times is greater than the men of ould times. There was the great Coolumbus, who came over in three ships to see Americky. What did he know about paper boats? Nothing at all, at all. He cum over in big ships, while this young feller has cum all the way from Canada. I tell ye the men of ould times was not up to the men of these times. Thin there's Captain Boyton, who don't use any boat or ship at all, at all, but goes aswimming in rubber clothes to keep him dry all over the Atlantic Oshin. Jis' look, man, how he landed on the shores of ould Ireland not long since. Now what's Coolumbus, or any other man of the past ages, to him? Coolumbus could not hold a candle to Boyton! No, I tell ye agen that the men of this age is greater than the men of the past ages." "And," broke in No.2, "there's a Britisher who's gone to the River Niles in a canoe." "The River Niles!" hotly exclaimed No. 1; "don't waste your breath on that thing. It's no new thing at all, at all. It was diskivered a long time a go, and nobody cares a fig for it now." "Yet," responded No.2, "some of those old-times people were very enterprising. There was that great traveller Robinson Crusoe: ye must confess he was a great man for his time." "The same who wint to the South Sea Islands and settled there?" asked the first biographer. "The "very same man," replied No.2, with animation.
This instructive conversation was here interrupted by a party of ladies and gentlemen, who in turn gave their views of canoe and canoeist.
CHAPTER XIII. FROM THE SAVANNAH RIVER TO FLORIDA.
ROUTE TO THE SEA ISLANDS OF GEORGIA. — STORM-BOUND ON GREEN ISLAND. — OSSABAW ISLAND. — ST. CATHERINE'S SOUND. — SAPELO ISLAND. — THE MUD OF MUD RIVER. — NIGHT IN A NEGRO CABIN. — "DE SHOUTINGS" ON DOBOY ISLAND. — BROUGHTON ISLAND. — ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS. — INTERVIEW WITH AN ALLIGATOR.— A NIGHT IN JOINTER HAMMOCK. — CUMBERLAND ISLAND AND ST. MARY'S RIVER. — FAREWELL TO THE SEA.
On February 24th, the voyage was again resumed. My route lay through the coast islands of Georgia, as far south as the state boundary, Cumberland Sound, and the St. Mary's River. This part of the coast is very interesting, and is beautifully delineated on the Coast Charts No. 56-57 of the United States Coast Survey, which were published the year after my voyage ended.
Steamers run from Savannah through these interesting interior water-ways to the ports of the St. John's River, Florida, and by taking this route the traveller can escape a most uninteresting railroad journey from Savannah to Jacksonville, where sandy soils and pine forests present an uninviting prospect to the eye. A little dredging, in a few places along the steamboat route, should be done at national cost, to make this a more convenient and expeditious tidal route for vessels.
Leaving Greenwich, Bonaventure, and Thunderbolt behind me on the upland, the canoe entered the great marshy district of the coast along the Wilmington and Skiddaway rivers to Skiddaway Narrows, which is a contracted, crooked watercourse connecting the Skiddaway with the Burnside River. The low lands were made picturesque by hammocks, some of which were cultivated.
In leaving the Burnside for the broad Vernon River, as the canoe approached the sea, one of the sudden tempests which frequently vex these coast-waters arose, and drove me to a hammock in the marshes of Green Island, on the left bank and opposite the mouth of the Little Ogeechee River. Green Island has been well cultivated in the past, but is now only the summer home of Mr. Styles, its owner. Two or three families of negroes inhabited the cabins and looked after the property of the absent proprietor.
I waded to my knees in the mud before the canoe could be landed, and, as it stormed all night, I slept on the floor of the humble cot of the negro Echard Holmes, having first treated the household to crackers and coffee. The negroes gathered from other points to examine the canoe, and, hearing that I was from the north, one grizzly old darky begged me to "carry" his complaints to Washington.
"De goberment," he said, "has been berry good to wees black folks. It gib us our freedom, — all berry well; but dar is an noder ting wees wants; dat is, wees wants General Grant to make tings stashionary. De storekeeper gibs a poor nigger only one dollar fur bushel corn, sometimes not so much. Den he makes poor nigger gib him tree dollars fur bag hominy, sometimes more'n dat. Wees wants de goberment to make tings stashionary. Make de storekeeper gib black man one dollar and quarter fur de bushel of corn, and make him sell de poor nigger de bag hominy fur much less dan tree dollars. Make all tings stashionary. Den dar's one ting more. Tell de goberment to do fur poor darky 'nodder ting, — make de ole massa say to me, You's been good slave in ole times, — berry good slave; now I gib you one, two, tree, five acres of land for yoursef.' Den ole nigger be happy, and massa be happy too; den bof of um bees happy. Hab you a leetle bacca fur dis ole man?"
From the Styles mansion it was but three miles to Ossabaw Sound. Little Don Island and Raccoon Key are in the mouth of the Vernon. Between the two flat islands is a deep passage through which the tides rush with great force; it is called Hell Gate. On the south side of Raccoon Key the Great Ogeechee River pours its strong volume of water into Ossabaw Sound.
I entered the Great Ogeechee through the Don Island passage, and saw sturgeon-fishermen at work with their nets along the shores of Ossabaw, one of the sea islands. Ossabaw Island lies between Ossabaw and St. Catherine's sounds, and is eight miles long and six miles wide. The side towards the sea is firm upland, diversified with glades, while the western portion is principally marshes cut up by numerous creeks. All the sea islands produce the long staple cotton known as sea-island cotton, and before the war a very valuable variety. A few negroes occupy the places abandoned by the proprietor, and eke out a scanty livelihood.
There are many deer in the forests of Ossabaw Island. One of its late proprietors informed me that there must be at least ten thousand wild hogs there, as they have been multiplying for many years, and but few were shot by the negroes. The domestic hog becomes a very shy animal if left to himself for two or three years. The hunter may search for him without a dog almost in vain, though the woods may contain large numbers of these creatures.
The weather was now delightful, and had I possessed a light tent I would not have sought shelter at night in a human habitation anywhere along the route. The malaria which arises from fresh-water sinks in many of the sea islands during the summer months, did not now make camping-out dangerous to the health. Crossing the Great Ogeechee above Middle Marsh Island, I followed the river to the creek called Florida Passage, through which I reached Bear River, with its wide and long reaches, and descended it to St. Catherine's Sound.
Now the sea opened to full view as the canoe crossed the tidal ocean gateway two miles to North Newport River. When four miles up the Newport I entered Johnson's Creek, which flows from North to South Newport rivers. By means of the creek and the South Newport River, my little craft was navigated down to the southern end of St. Catherine's Island to the sound of the same name, and here another inlet was crossed at sunset, and High Point of Sapelo Island was reached.
From among the green trees of the high bluff a mansion, which exhibited the taste of its builder, rose imposingly. This was, however, but one of the many edifices that are tombs of buried hopes. The proprietor, a northern gentleman, after the war purchased one-third of Sapelo Island for fifty-five thousand dollars in gold. He attempted, as many other enterprising northerners had done, to give the late slave a chance to prove his worth as a freedman to the world.
"Pay the negro wages; treat him as you would treat a white man, and he will reward your confidence with industry and gratitude." So thought and so acted the large-hearted northern colonel. He built a large mansion, engaged his freedmen, paid them for their work, and treated them like men. The result was ruin, and simply because he had not paused to consider that the negro had not been born a freedman, and that the demoralization of slavery was still upon him. Beside which facts we must also place certain ethnological and moral principles which exist in the pure negro type, and which are entirely overlooked by those philanthropic persons who have rarely, if ever, seen a full-blooded negro, but affect to understand him through his half-white brother, the mulatto.
Mud River opened its wide mouth before me as I left the inlet, but the tide was very low, and Mud River is a sticking-point in the passage of the Florida steamers. It became so dark that I was obliged to get near the shore to make a landing. My attempt was made opposite a negro's house which was on a bluff but the water had receded into the very narrow channel of Mud River, and I was soon stuck fast on a flat. Getting overboard, I sank to my knees in the soft mud. I called for help, and was answered by a tall darky, who, with a double-barrelled gun, left his house and stood in a threatening manner on the shore. I appealed for help, and said I wished to go ashore. "Den cum de best way you can," he answered in a surly manner. "What duz you want 'bout here, any way? What duz you want on Choc'late Plantation, anyhow?"
I explained to this ugly black that I was a northern man, travelling to see the country, and wished to camp near his house for protection, and promised, if he would aid me to land, that I would convince him of my honest purpose by showing him the contents of my canoe, and would prove to him that I was no enemy to the colored man. I told him of the maps, the letters, and the blankets which were in the little canoe now so fast in the mud, and what a loss it would be if some marauder, passing on the next high tide, should steal my boat.
The fellow slowly lowered his gun, which had been held in a threatening position, and said:
"Nobody knows his friends in dese times. I'se had a boat stealed by some white man, and spose you was cumin to steal sumting else. Dese folks on de riber can't be trussed. Dey steals ebryting. Heaps o' bad white men 'bout nowadnys sens de war. Steals a nigger's chickens, boats, and ebryting dey lays hands on. Up at de big house on High Pint (norfen gemmin built him, and den got gusted wid cotton-planting and went home) de white folks goes and steals all de cheers and beds, and ebryting out ob de house. Sens de war all rascals."
It was a wearisome and dangerous job for me to navigate the canoe over the soft, slippery mud to the firm shore, as there were unfathomed places in the flats which might ingulf or entomb me at any step; but the task was completed, and I stood face to face with the now half tranquillized negro. Before removing the mud that hung upon me to the waist in heavy clods, I showed the darky my chart-case, and explained the object of my mission. He was very intelligent, and, after asking a few questions, said to his son:
"Take dis gun to de house;" and then turning to me, continued: "Dis is de sort ob man I'se am. I'se knows how to treat a friend like a white man, and I'se can fight wid my knife or my fist or my gun anybody who 'poses on me. Now I'se knows you is a gemmin I'se won't treat you like a nigger. Gib you best I'se got. Cum to de house."
When inside of the house of this resolute black, every attention was paid to my comfort. The cargo of the paper canoe was piled up in one corner of the room. The wife and children sat before the bright fire and listened to the story of my cruise. I doctored the sick pickaninny of my host, and made the family a pot of strong coffee. This negro could read, but he asked me to address a label he wished to attach to a bag of Sea-Island cotton of one hundred and sixty pounds' weight, which he had raised, and was to ship by the steamboat Lizzie Baker to a mercantile house in Savannah.
As I rested upon my blankets, which were spread upon the floor of the only comfortable room in the house, at intervals during the night the large form of the black stole softly in and bent over me to see if I were well covered up, and he as noiselessly piled live-oak sticks upon the dying embers to dry up the dampness which rose from the river.
He brought me a basin of cold water in the morning, and not possessing a towel clean enough for a white man, he insisted that I should use his wife's newly starched calico apron to wipe my face and hands upon. When I offered him money for the night's accommodation and the excellent oyster breakfast that his wife prepared for me, he said: "You may gib my wife whateber pleases you for her cooking, but nuffin for de food or de lodgings. I'se no nigger, ef I is a cullud man."
It was now Saturday, and as I rowed through the marsh thoroughfare called New Tea Kettle Creek, which connects Mud River with Doboy Sound near the southern end of Sapelo Island, I calculated the chances of finding a resting-place for Sunday. If I went up to the mainland through North and Darien rivers to the town of Darien, my past experience taught me that instead of enjoying rest I would become a forced exhibiter of the paper canoe to crowds of people. To avoid this, I determined to pass the day in the first hammock that would afford shelter and fire-wood; but as the canoe entered Doboy Sound, which, with its inlet, separates Sapelo from the almost treeless Wolf Island, the wind rose with such violence that I was driven to take refuge upon Doboy Island, a small marshy territory, the few firm acres of which were occupied by the settlement and steam saw-mill of Messrs. Hiltons, Foster & Gibson, a northern lumber firm.
Foreign and American vessels were anchored under the lee of protecting marshes, awaiting their cargoes of sawed deals and hewn timber; while rafts of logs, which had been borne upon the currents of the Altamaha and other streams from the far interior regions of pine forests, were collected here and manufactured into lumber.
One of the proprietors, a northern gentleman, occupied with his family a very comfortable cottage near the store and steam saw-mill. As the Doboy people had learned of the approach of the paper canoe from southern newspapers, the little craft was identified as soon as it touched the low shores of the island.
I could not find any kind of hotel or lodging-place in this settlement of Yankees, Canadians, and negroes, and was about to leave it in search of some lone hammock, when a mechanic kindly offered me the floor of an unfinished room in an unfinished house, in which I passed my Sunday trying to rest, and obtaining my meals at a restaurant kept by a negro.
A member of the Spaulding family, the owners of a part of Sapelo Island, called upon me, and seeing me in such inhospitable quarters, with fleas in hundreds invading my blankets, urged me to return with him to his island domain, where he might have an opportunity to make me comfortable. The kind gentleman little knew how hardened I had become to such annoyances as hard floors and the active flea. Such inconveniences had been robbed of their discomforts by the kind voices of welcome which, with few exceptions, came from every southern gentleman whose territory had been invaded by the paper canoe.
There was but one place of worship on the island, and that was under the charge of the negroes. Accepting the invitation of a nephew of the resident New England proprietor of Doboy Island to attend "de shoutings," we set out on Sunday evening for the temporary place of negro worship. A negro girl, decked with ribbons, called across the street to a young colored delinquent: "You no goes to de shoutings, Sam! Why fur? You neber hears me shout, honey, and dey do say I shouts so pretty. Cum 'long wid me now."
A few blacks had collected in the small shanty and the preacher, an old freedman, was about to read a hymn as we entered. At first the singing was low and monotonous, but it gradually swelled to a high pitch as the negroes became excited. Praying followed the singing. Then the black preacher set aside "de shouting" part of the service for what he considered more important interests, and discoursed upon things spiritual and temporal in this wise:
"Now I'se got someting to tell all' of yese berry 'portant." Here two young blacks got up to leave the room, but were rudely stopped by a negro putting his back against the door. "No, no," chuckled the preacher, "yese don't git off dat a-way. I'se prepared fur de ockasun. Nobody gits out ob dis room till I'se had my say. Jes you set down dar. Now I'se goin' to do one ting, and it's dis: I'se goin' to spread de Gospel all ober dis yere island of Doboy. Now's de time; talked long 'nuf, too long, 'bout buildin' de church. Whar's yere pride? whar is it? Got none! Look at dis room for a church! Look at dis pulpit — one flour-barrel wid one candle stickin' out ob a bottle! Dat's yere pulpit. Got no pride! Shamed o' yeresefs! Here white men comes way from New York to hear de Gospel in dis yere room wid flour-barrel fur pulpit, and empty bottle fur candlestick. No more talk now. All go to work. De mill pebple will gib us lumber fur de new church; odders mus' gib money. Tell ebbry cullud pusson on de island to cum on Tuesday and carry lumber, and gib ebbry one what he can, — one dollar apiece, or ten cents if got no more. De white gemmins we knows whar to find when we wants dar money, but de cullud ones is berry slippery when de hat am passed round."
At the termination of the preacher's exhortation, I proposed to my companion that I should present the minister with a dollar for his new church, but, with a look of dismay, he replied: "Oh, don't give it to the preacher. Hand it to that other negro sitting near him. We never trust the preacher with money; he always spends the church-money. We only trust him for preaching."
Monday, March 1st, opened fair, but the wind arose when the canoe reached Three Mile Cut, which connects the Darien with Altamaha River. I went through this narrow steamboat passage, and being prevented by the wind from entering the wide Altamaha, returned to the Darien River and ascended it to General's Cut, which, with Butler River, affords a passage to the Altamaha River. Before entering General's Cut, mistaking a large, half submerged alligator for a log on a mud bank, the canoe nearly touched the saurian before he was roused from his nap to retire into the water. General's Cut penetrates a rice plantation opposite the town of Darien, to Butler's Island, the estate of the late Pierce Butler, at its southern end. Rice-planting, since the war, had not proved a very profitable business to the present proprietors, who deserve much praise for the efforts they have made to educate their freedmen. A profitable crop of oranges is gathered some seasons from the groves upon Butler's Island.
From the mouth of General's Cut down Butler River to the Altamaha was but a short row. The latter stream would have taken me to Altamaha Sound, to avoid which I passed through Wood's Cut into the South Altamaha River, and proceeded through the lowland rice-plantations towards St. Simon's Island, which is by the sea. About the middle of the afternoon, when close to Broughton Island, where the South Altamaha presented a wide area to the strong head-wind which was sending little waves over my canoe, a white plantation-house, under the veranda of which an elderly gentleman was sitting, attracted my attention. Here was what seemed to be the last camping-ground on a route of several miles to St. Simon's Island.
If the wind continued to blow from the same quarter, the canoe could not cross Buttermilk Sound that night; so I went ashore to inquire if there were any hammocks in the marshes by the river-banks between the plantation and the sound.
The bachelor proprietor of Broughton Island, Captain Richard A. Akin, posted me as to the route to St. Simon's Island, but insisted that the canoe traveller should share his comfortable quarters until the next day; and when the next day came round, and the warm sun and smooth current of the wide Altamaha invited me to continue the voyage, the hospitable rice-planter thought the weather not settled enough for me to venture down to the sound. In fact, he held me a rather willing captive for several days, and then let me off on the condition that I should return at some future time, and spend a month with him in examining the sea islands and game resources of the vicinity.
Captain Akin was a successful rice-planter on the new system of employing freedmen on wages, but while he protected the ignorant blacks in all their newly-found rights, he was a thorough disciplinarian. The negroes seemed to like their employer, and stuck to him with greater tenacity than they did to those planters who allowed them to do as they pleased. The result of lax treatment with these people is always a failure of crops. The rivers and swamps near Broughton Island abound in fine fishes and terrapin, while the marshes and flats of the sea islands afford excellent opportunities for the sportsman to try his skill upon the feathered tribe.
On Monday, March 9th, the Maria Theresa left Broughton Island well provisioned with the stores the generous captain had pressed upon my acceptance. The atmosphere was softened by balmy breezes, and the bright sunlight played with the shadows of the clouds upon the wide marshes, which were now growing green with the warmth of returning spring. The fish sprang from the water as I touched it with my light oars.
St. Simon's Island, — where Mr. Pierce Butler once cultivated sea-island cotton, and to which he took his English bride, Miss Kemble, — with its almost abandoned plantation, was reached before ten o'clock. Frederica River carried me along the whole length of the island to St. Simon's Sound. When midway the island, I paused to survey what remains of the old town of Frederica, of which but few vestiges can be discovered. History informs us that Frederica was the first town built by the English in Georgia, and was founded by General Oglethorpe, who began and established the colony.
The fortress was regular and beautiful, and was the largest, most regular, and perhaps most costly of any in North America of British construction. Pursuing my journey southward, the canoe entered the exposed area of St. Simon's Sound, which, with its ocean inlet, was easily crossed to the wild and picturesque Jekyl Island, upon which the two bachelor brothers Dubignon live and hunt the deer, enjoying the free life of lords of the forest. Their old family mansion, once a haven of hospitality, where the northern tourist and shipwrecked sailor shared alike the good things of this life with the kind host, was used for a target by a gunboat during the late war, and is now in ruins.
Here, twenty years ago, at midnight, the slave-yacht "Wanderer" landed her cargo of African negroes, the capital for the enterprise being supplied by three southern gentlemen, and the execution of the work being intrusted, under carefully drawn contracts, to Boston parties.
The calm weather greatly facilitated my progress, and had I not missed Jekyl Creek, which is the steamboat thoroughfare through the marshes to Jekyl and St. Andrew's Sound, that whole day's experience would have been a most happy one. The mouth of Jekyl Creek was a narrow entrance, and being off in the sound, I passed it as I approached the lowlands, which were skirted until a passage at Cedar Hammock through the marsh was found, some distance from the one I was seeking. Into this I entered, and winding about for some time over its tortuous course, at a late hour in the afternoon the canoe emerged into a broad watercourse, down which I could look across Jekyl Sound to the sea.
This broad stream was Jointer Creek, and I ascended it to find a spot of high ground upon which to camp. It was now low water, and the surface of the marshes was three or four feet above my head. After much anxious searching, and a great deal of rowing against the last of the ebb, a forest of pines and palmetto-trees was reached on Colonel's Island, at a point about four miles — across the marshes and Brunswick River — from the interesting old town of Brunswick, Georgia.
Home of the Alligator (101K)
The soft, muddy shores of the hammock were in one place enveloped in a thicket of reeds, and here I rested upon my oars to select a convenient landing-place. The rustling of the reeds suddenly attracted my attention. Some animal was crawling through the thicket in the direction of the boat. My eyes became fixed upon the mysterious shaking and waving of the tops of the reeds, and my hearing was strained to detect the cause of the crackling of the dry rushes over which this unseen creature was moving. A moment later my curiosity was satisfied, for there emerged slowly from the covert an alligator nearly as large as my canoe. The brute's head was as long as a barrel; his rough coat of mail was besmeared with mud, and his dull eyes were fixed steadily upon me. I was so surprised and fascinated by the appearance of this huge reptile that I remained immovable in my boat, while he in a deliberate manner entered the water within a few feet of me. The hammock suddenly lost all its inviting aspect, and I pulled away from it faster than I had approached. In the gloom I observed two little hammocks, between Colonel's Island and the Brunswick River, which seemed to be near Jointer's Creek, so I followed the tortuous thoroughfares until I was within a quarter of a mile of one of them.
Pulling my canoe up a narrow creek towards the largest hammock, until the creek ended in the lowland, I was cheered by the sight of a small house in a grove of live-oaks, to reach which I was obliged to abandon my canoe and attempt to cross the soft marsh. The tide was now rising rapidly, and it might be necessary for me to swim some inland creek before I could arrive at the upland.
An oar was driven into the soft mud of the marsh and the canoe tied to it, for I knew that the whole country, with the exception of the hammock near by, would be under water at flood-tide. Floundering through mud and pressing aside the tall, wire-like grass of the lowland, which entangled my feet, frequently leaping natural ditches, and going down with a thud in the mud on the other side, I finally struck the firm ground of the largest Jointer Hammock, when the voice of its owner, Mr. R. F. Williams, sounded most cheerfully in my ears as he exclaimed: "Where did you come from? How did you get across the marsh?"
The unfortunate position of my boat was explained while the family gathered round me, after which we sat down to supper. Mr. Wilhams felt anxious about the cargo of my boat. The coons, he said, "will scent your provisions, and tear everything to pieces in the boat. We must go look after it immediately." To go to the canoe we were obliged to follow a creek which swept past the side of the hammock, opposite to my landing-place, and row two or three miles on Jointer Creek. At nine o'clock we reached the locality where I had abandoned the paper canoe. Everything had changed in appearance; the land was under water; not a landmark remained except the top of the oar, which rose out of the lake-like expanse of water, while near it gracefully floated my little companion. We towed her to the hammock; and after the tedious labor of divesting myself of the marsh mud, which clung to my clothes, had been crowned with success, the comfortable bed furnished by my host gave rest to limbs and nerves which had been severely overtaxed since sun set.
The following day opened cloudy and windy. The ocean inlet of Jekyl and St. Andrew's sounds is three miles wide. From the mouth of Jointer Creek, across these unprotected sounds, to High Point of Cumberland Island, is eight miles. The route from the creek to Cumberland Island was a risky one for so small a boat as the paper canoe while the weather continued unpropitious. After entering the sounds there was but one spot of upland, near the mouth of the Satilla River, that could be used for camping purposes on the vast area of marshes.
During the month of March rainy and windy weather prevail on this coast. I could ill afford to lose any time shut up in Jointer's Hammock by bad weather, as the low regions of Okefenokee Swamp were to be penetrated before the warm season could make the task a disagreeable one. After holding a consultation with Mr. Williams, he contracted to take the canoe and its captain across St. Andrew's Sound to High Point of Cumberland Island that day. His little sloop was soon under way, and though the short, breaking waves of the sound, and the furious blasts of wind, made the navigation of the shoals disagreeable, we landed quietly at Mr. Chubbs' Oriental Hotel, at High Point, soon after noon.
Mr. Martin, the surveyor of the island, welcomed me to Cumberland, and gave me much information pertaining to local matters. The next morning the canoe left the high bluffs of this beautiful sea island so filled with historic associations, and threaded the marshy thoroughfare of Cumberland and Brickhill River to Cumberland Sound. As I approached the mouth of the St. Mary's River, the picturesque ruins of Dungeness towered above the live-oak forest of the southern end of Cumberland Island. It was with regret I turned my back upon that sea, the sounds of which had so long struck upon my ear with their sweet melody. It seemed almost a moan that was borne to me now as the soft waves laved the sides of my graceful craft, as though to give her a last, loving farewell.