The
rich lands here produced as high as fifty-five
bushels of rice to the acre, under forced slave
labor; now the free blacks cannot wrest from
nature more than twenty-five or thirty bushels.
Fine old mansions lined the river's banks, but
the families had been so reduced by the ravages
of war, that I saw refined ladies, who had been
educated in the schools of Edinburgh, Scotland,
overseeing the negroes as they worked in the
yards of the rice-mills. The undaunted spirit of
these southern ladies, as they worked in their
homes now so desolate, roused my admiration.
A light, graceful figure, enveloped in an old
shawl, and mounted on an old horse, flitted about
one plantation like a restless spirit.
"That lady's father," said a gentleman to me,
"owned three plantations, worth three millions
of dollars, before the war. There is a rice-mill
on one of the plantations which cost thirty
thousand dollars. She now fights against misfortune,
and will not give up. The Confederate war
would not have lasted six months if it had not
been for our women. They drove thousands of
us young men into the fight; and now, having
lost all, they go bravely to work, even taking the
places of their old servants in their grand old
homes. It's hard for them, though, I assure
you."
On Tuesday, January 25th, I paddled down the
Peedee, stopping at the plantations of Dr.
Weston and Colonel Benjamin Allston. The latter
gentleman was a son of one of the governors of
South Carolina. He kindly gave me a letter of
introduction to Commodore Richard Lowndes,
who lived near the coast. From the Peedee I
passed through a cut in the marshes into the
broad Waccamaw, and descended it to Winyah
Bay.
Georgetown is located between the mouths of
the Peedee and Sampit rivers. Cautiously
approaching the city, I landed at Mr. David
Risley's steam saw-mills, and that gentleman kindly
secreted my boat in a back counting-room, while
I went up town to visit the post-office. By some,
to me, unaccountable means, the people had
heard of the arrival of the paper boat, and three
elaborately dressed negro women accosted me
with, "Please show wees tree ladies de little
paper boat."
Before I had reached my destination, the
post-office, a body of men met me, on their way to
the steam-mill. The crowd forced me back to
the canoe, and asked so many questions that I
was sorely taxed to find answers for these
gentlemen. There were three editors in the crowd:
two were white men, one a negro. The young
men, who claimed the position of representatives
of the spirit of the place and of the times,
published "The Comet," while the negro, as though
influenced by a spirit of sarcasm, conducted
"The Planet." The third newspaper
represented at the canoe reception was the "
Georgetown Times," which courteously noticed the
little boat that had come so far. "The Planet"
prudently kept in the dark, and said nothing, but
"The Comet," representing the culture of the
young men of the city, published the following
notice of my arrival:
"Tom Collins has at last arrived in his
wonderful paper boat. He has it hitched to Mr.
Risley's new saw-mill, where every one can
have a view. He intends shooting off his
six-pounder before weighing anchor in the morning.
Hurrah for Collins."
I left Mr. Risley's comfortable home before
noon the next day, and followed the shores of
Winyah Bay towards the sea. Near Battery
White, on the right shore, in the pine forests,
was the birth-place of Marion, the brave patriot
of the American revolution, whose bugle's call
summoned the youth of those days to arms.
When near the inlet, the rice-plantation
marshes skirted the shore for some distance.
Out of these wet lands flowed a little stream,
called Mosquito Creek, which once connected
the North Santee River with Winyah Bay, and
served as a boundary to South Island. The
creek was very crooked, and the ebb-tide strong.
When more than halfway to Santee River I was
forced to leave the stream, as it had become
closed by tidal deposits and rank vegetation.
The ditches of rice plantations emptied their
drainage of the lowlands into Mosquito Creek.
Following a wide ditch to the right, through fields
of rich alluvial soil, which had been wrested by
severe toil from nature, the boat soon reached
the rice-mill of Commodore Richard Lowndes.
A little further on, and situated in a noble grove
of live-oaks, which were draped in the weird
festoons of Spanish moss, on the upland arose
the stately home of the planter, who still kept his
plantation in cultivation, though on a scale of less
magnitude than formerly. It was, indeed, a
pleasant evening that I passed in the company of the
refined members of the old commodore's
household, and with a pang of regret the next day I
paddled along the main canal of the lowlands,
casting backward glances at the old house, with
its grand old trees. The canal ended at North
Santee Bay.
While I was preparing to ascend the river a
tempest arose, which kept me a weary prisoner
among the reeds of the rice marsh. The hollow
reeds made poor fuel for cooking, and when the
dark, stormy night shut down upon me, the damp
soil grew damper as the tide arose, until it
threatened to overflow the land. For hours I lay in my
narrow canoe waiting for the tidal flood to do its
worst, but it receded, and left me without any
means of building a fire, as the reeds were wet
by the storm.
