It grew dark,
they trotted across the field, conducting me up
to the very doors of the planter's home, where
Captain Mosely, late of the Confederate army,
gave me a soldier's hearty welcome.
"The war is over," he said, "and any northern
gentleman is welcome to what we have left."
Until midnight, this keen-eyed, intelligent officer
entertained me with a flow of anecdotes of the
war times, his hair-breadth escapes, &c.; the
conversation being only interrupted when he
paused to pile wood upon the fire, the
chimney-place meantime glowing like a furnace. He
told me that Captain Maffitt, of the late
Confederate navy, lived at Masonboro, on the sound;
and that had I called upon him, he could have
furnished, as an old officer of the Coast Survey,
much valuable geographical information. This
pleasant conversation was at last interrupted
by the wife of my host, who warned us in her
courteous way of the lateness of the hour. With
a good-night to my host, and a sad farewell
to the sea, I prepared myself for the morrow's
journey.
CHAPTER XI. FROM CAPE FEAR TO CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA.
A PORTAGE TO LAKE WACCAMAW. - THE SUBMERGED SWAMPS. -
NIGHT AT A TURPENTINE DISTILLER - A DISMAL
WILDERNESS. - OWLS AND MISTLETOE. - CRACKERS AND NEGROES. -
ACROSS THE SOUTH CAROLINA LINE. - A CRACKER'S IDEA OF
HOSPITALITY. - POT BLUFF. - PEEDEE RIVER. - GEORGETOWN.
- WINYAH BAY. - THE RICE PLANTATIONS OF THE SANTEE
RIVERS. - A NIGHT WITH THE SANTEE NEGROES. - ARRIVAL
AT CHARLESTON.
To reach my next point of embarkation a
portage was necessary. Wilmington was
twelve miles distant, and I reached the railroad
station of that city with my canoe packed in a
bed of corn-husks, on a one-horse dray, in time
to take the evening train to Flemington, on Lake
Waccamaw. The polite general freight-agent,
Mr. A. Pope, allowed my canoe to be transported
in the passenger baggage-car, where, as it had
no covering, I was obliged to steady it during
the ride of thirty-two miles, to protect it from
the friction caused by the motion of the train.
Mr. Pope quietly telegraphed to the few families
at the lake, "Take care of the paper canoe;" so
when my destination was reached, kind voices
greeted me through the darkness and offered me
the hospitalities of Mrs. Brothers' home-like inn
at the Flemington Station. After Mr. Carroll had
conveyed the boat to his storehouse, we all sat
down to tea as sociably as though we were old
friends.
On the morrow we carried the Maria Theresa
on our shoulders to the little lake, out of which
the long and crooked river with its dark cypress
waters flowed to the sea. A son of Mr. Short,
a landed proprietor who holds some sixty
thousand acres of the swamp lands of the Waccamaw,
escorted me in his yacht, with a party of ladies
and gentlemen, five miles across the lake to my
point of departure. It was now noon, and our
little party picnicked under the lofty trees which
rise from the low shores of Lake Waccamaw.
A little later we said our adieu, and the paper
canoe shot into the whirling current which rushes
out of the lake through a narrow aperture into
a great and dismal swamp. Before leaving the
party, Mr. Carroll had handed me a letter
addressed to Mr. Hall, who was in charge of a
turpentine distillery on my route. "It is twenty
miles by the river to my friend Hall's," he said,
"but in a straight line the place is just four
miles from here." Such is the character of the
Waccamaw, this most crooked of rivers.
I had never been on so rapid and continuous
a current. As it whirled me along the narrow
watercourse I was compelled to abandon my
oars and use the paddle in order to have my face
to the bow, as the abrupt turns of the stream
seemed to wall me in on every side. Down
the tortuous, black, rolling current went the
paper canoe, with a giant forest covering the
great swamp and screening me from the light
of day. The swamps were submerged, and as
the water poured out of the thickets into the
river it would shoot across the land from one
bend to another, presenting in places the
mystifying spectacle of water running up stream, but
not up an inclined plain. Festoons of gray
Spanish moss hung from the weird limbs of
monster trees, giving a funeral aspect to the
gloomy forest, while the owls hooted as though
it were night. The creamy, wax-like berries
of the mistletoe gave a Druidical aspect to the
woods, for this parasite grew upon the branches
of many trees.
One spot only of firm land rose from the water
in sixteen miles of paddling from the lake, and
passing it, I went flying on with the turbulent
stream four miles further, to where rafts of logs
blocked the river, and the sandy banks, covered
with the upland forest of pines, encroached upon
the lowlands. This was Old Dock, with its
turpentine distillery smoking and sending out
resinous vapors.
Young Mr. Hall read my letter and invited
me to his temporary home, which, though
roughly built of unplaned boards, possessed two
comfortable rooms, and a large fireplace, in
which light-wood, the terebinthine heart of the
pine-tree, was cheerfully blazing.
I had made the twenty miles in three hours,
but the credit of this quick time must be given
to the rapid current. My host did not seem
well pleased with the solitude imposed upon
him. His employers had sent him from
Wilmington, to hold and protect "their turpentine
farm," which was a wilderness of trees covering
four thousand acres, and was valued, with its
distillery, at five thousand dollars.
