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.