_Nov. 26._ We got to R.'s house, where he told us he had been helping
Mr. Wells all day before in boating his cotton from Morgan Island to
his home place.[149] There was about $3000 worth on the island, and he
did not choose to expose the rebels to any further temptation in
regard to it. It seems that Tuesday morning the cow-minder had gone
out to the pen with his milk-pail and never returned. Search being
made, the milk-pail and his jacket were found, and some new tracks of
shoes on the beach, also traces of a bivouac breakfast and marks of a
boat's keel on the Coosaw River beach. Nothing more is known than
this. The presumption is that a scouting party had come over Coosaw
River and bivouacked on the beach, hauling up their boat, and that,
seeing this poor man in the morning, they gobbled him up and cleared
out as they came. He was an Edisto man, of considerable intelligence,
and it is hoped his information will not be so reliable as the rebels
might wish. Mr. Wells immediately informed Captain Dutch and got Mr.
R. to help him boat over his cotton. Captain Dutch sent a guard to
patrol the island and sent his little schooner up opposite Morgan
Island in Coosaw River as an outpost.
We had an immense rush at the store yesterday, four hundred and sixty
odd dollars during the day here. R. and Wells have taken over fifteen
hundred dollars in the three days after opening their goods. Amaritta
bought over forty dollars' worth at once, and poor Juliana staggered
off with a load on her head that she could hardly carry. The trunks go
like smoke, so do the firkins and other domestic wares.
From H. W.
_Dec. 1._ Uncle Nat, who has carried the plantation keys for forty
years, giving out all the allowance for people and creatures, and has
done no field work for that length of time, has had an acre and a half
of cotton this year, and has raised the largest proportion, six
hundred pounds seed-cotton per acre, of any one on the place. He lives
at Pine Grove with his wife, but plants here for old association's
sake, and the other day, when C. made the last cotton payment, he gave
Nat's money to his sister, Nancy. The next morning Nat was up here
early and took his hat off to the ground to C. "Came to thank you for
what you send me yesterday, Sar--much obliged to you, Sar (with
another flourish and scrape). I well sat-is-_fy_, and jest as long as
the Lord give me life and dese ole arms can do _so_ (imitating the
motion of hoeing), I work cotton for you, Sar!"