CHAPTER XII._Voyage of the Paper Canoe A Geographical Journey of 2500 miles, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, during the years 1874-5.

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 CALIBOGUE 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.

[Illustration: From Bull's Bay, South Carolina, to St. Simon's Sound,

Georgia.

Route of Paper Canoe MARIA THERESA From Bull's Bay, N.C.

to St. Simon's Sound, Ga. Followed by N. H. Bishop in 1875

_Copyright, 1878 by Lee & Shepard_]

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 matin 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 ebb-tide 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 state-room, 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, but 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

volume 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 sailboat, 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