Mine Host, Before
A Blazing Wood Fire, Told Me Of The Origin Of The
Name Of Murderkill Creek.
"In the early settlement of the country,"
began the innkeeper, "the white settlers did all
they could to civilize the Indians, but the cussed
savages wouldn't take to it kindly, but worried
the life out of the new-comers.
At last a great
landed proprietor, who held a big grant of land
in these parts, thought he'd settle the troubles.
So he planted a brass cannon near the creek,
and invited all the Indians of the neighborhood
to come and hear the white man's Great Spirit
talk. The crafty man got the savages before the
mouth of the cannon, and said, 'Now look into
the hole there, for it is the mouth of the white
man's Great Spirit, which will soon speak in tones
of thunder.' The fellow then touched off the
gun, and knocked half the devils into splinters.
The others were so skeerd at the big voice they
had heard that they were afraid to move, and
were soon all killed by one charge after another
from the cannon: so the creek has been called
Murderkill ever since."
I afterwards discovered that there were other
places on the coast which had the same legend
as the one told me by the innkeeper. Holders
of small farms lived in the vicinity of this tavern,
but the post-office was at Frederica, five miles
inland. Embarking the next day, I felt sure of
ending my cruise on Delaware Bay before night,
as the quiet morning exhibited no signs of rising
winds. The little pilot town of Lewes, near
Cape Delaware, and behind the Breakwater, is a
port of refuge for storm-bound vessels. From
this village I expected to make a portage of six
miles to Love Creek, a tributary of Rehoboth
Sound. The frosty nights were now exerting a
sanitary influence over the malarial districts
which I had entered, and the unacclimated
canoeist of northern birth could safely pursue his
journey, and sleep at night in the swamps along
the fresh-water streams if protected from the
dews by a rubber or canvas covering. My hopes
of reaching the open sea that night were to be
drowned, and in cold water too; for that day,
which opened so calmly and with such smiling
promises, was destined to prove a season of trial,
and before its evening shadows closed around
me, to witness a severe struggle for life in the
cold waters of Delaware Bay.
An hour after leaving Murderkill Creek the
wind came from the north in strong squalls.
My little boat taking the blasts on her quarter,
kept herself free of the swashy seas hour after
hour. I kept as close to the sandy beach of the
great marshes as possible, so as to be near the
land in case an accident should happen.
Mispillion Creek and a light-house on the north of
its mouth were passed, when the wind and seas
struck my boat on the port beam, and continually
crowded her ashore. The water breaking on
the hard, sandy beach of the marshy coast made
it too much of a risk to attempt a landing, as the
canoe would be smothered in the swashy seas if
her head way was checked for a moment.
Amidships the canoe was only a few inches out of
water, but her great sheer, full bow, and
smoothness of hull, with watchful management, kept her
from swamping. I had struggled along for
fourteen miles since morning, and was fatigued
by the strain consequent upon the continued
manoeuvring of my boat through the rough waves.
I reached a point on Slaughter Beach, where the
bay has a width of nearly nineteen miles, when
the tempest rose to such a pitch that the great
raging seas threatened every moment to wash
over my canoe, and to force me by their violence
close into the beach. To my alarm, as the boat
rose and fell upon the waves, the heads of
sharp-pointed stakes appeared and disappeared in the
broken waters. They were the stakes of
fishermen to which they attach their nets in the season
of trout-fishing. The danger of being impaled
on one of these forced me off shore again.
There was no undertow; the seas being driven
over shoals were irregular and broken. At last my
sea came. It rolled up without a crest, square
and formidable. I could not calculate where it
would break, but I pulled for life away from it
towards the beach upon which the sea was
breaking with deafening sound. It was only for
a moment that I beheld the great brown wave,
which bore with it the mud of the shoal, bearing
down upon me; for the next, it broke astern,
sweeping completely over the canoe from stern
to stem, filling it through the opening of the
canvas round my body. Then for a while the
watery area was almost smooth, so completely
had the great wave levelled it. The canoe
being water-logged, settled below the surface,
the high points of the ends occasionally
emerging from the water. Other heavy seas followed
the first, one of which striking me as high as my
head and shoulders, turned both the canoe and
canoeist upside-down.
A Capsize in Delaware Bay (100K)
Kicking myself free of the canvas deck, I
struck out from under the shell, and quickly
rose to the surface. It was then that the words
of an author of a European Canoe Manual came
to my mind: "When you capsize, first right the
canoe and get astride it over one end, keeping
your legs in the water; when you have crawled
to the well or cockpit, bale out the boat with
your hat." Comforting as these instructions
from an experienced canoe traveller seemed
when reading them in my hermitage ashore, the
present application of them (so important a
principle in Captain Jack Bunsby's log of life)
was in this emergency an impossibility; for my
hat had disappeared with the seat-cushion and
one iron outrigger, while the oars were floating
to leeward with the canoe.
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