Voyage of the Paper Canoe Part 12

But sounds now reached my ears that made me feel that I was not quite alone in this desolate swamp. The gray squirrels scolded among the tree-tops; robins, the brown thrush, and a large black woodp.e.c.k.e.r with his bright red head, each reminded me of Him without whose notice not a sparrow falleth to the ground.

Ten miles of this black current were pa.s.sed over, when the first signs of civilization appeared, in the shape of a sombre-looking, two-storied house, located upon a point of the mainland which entered the swamp on the left sh.o.r.e of the river. At this point the river widened to five or six rods, and at intervals land appeared a few inches above the water.

Wherever the pine land touched the river a pig-pen of rails offered shelter and a gathering-place for the hogs, which are turned loose by the white Cracker to feed upon the roots and mast of the wilderness.

Reeve's Ferry, on the right bank, with a little store and turpentine-still, twenty miles from Old Dock, was the next sign of the presence of man in this swamp. The river now became broad as I approached Piraway Ferry, which is two miles below Piraway Farm.

Remembering the warnings of the squire as to the "awful wretches in the big pine woods," I kept a sharp lookout for the old women who were to give me so much trouble, but the raftsmen on the river explained that though Jim Gore had told me the truth, I had misunderstood his p.r.o.nunciation of the word _reaches_, or river bends, which are called in this vicinity _wretches_. The reaches referred to by Mr. Gore were so long and straight as to afford open pa.s.sages for wind to blow up them, and these fierce gusts of head winds give the raftsmen much trouble while poling their rafts against them.

My fears of ill treatment were now at rest, for my tiny craft, with her sharp-pointed bow, was well adapted for such work. Landing at the ferry where a small scow or flat-boat was resting upon the firm land, the ferryman, Mr. Daniel Dunkin, would not permit me to camp out of doors while his log-cabin was only one mile away on the pine-covered uplands.

He told me that the boundary-line between North and South Carolina crossed this swamp three and a half miles below Piraway Ferry, and that the first town on the river Waccamaw, in South Carolina, Conwayborough, was a distance of ninety miles by river and only thirty miles by land.

There was but one bridge over the river, from its head to Conwayborough, and it was built by Mr. James Wortham, twenty years before, for his plantation. This bridge was twenty miles below Piraway, and from it by land to a settlement on Little River, which empties into the Atlantic, was a distance of only five miles. A short ca.n.a.l would connect this river and its lumber regions with Little River and the sea.

For the first time in my experience as a traveller I had entered a country where the miles were _short_. When fifteen years old I made my first journey alone and on foot from the vicinity of Boston to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This boyish pedestrian trip occupied about twenty-one days, and covered some three hundred miles of hard tramping.

New England gives honest measure on the finger-posts along her highways.

The traveller learns by well-earned experience the length of _her_ miles; but in the wilderness of the south there is no standard of five thousand two hundred and eighty feet to a statute mile, and the watermen along the sea-coast are ignorant of the fact that one-sixtieth of a degree of lat.i.tude (about six thousand and eighty feet) is the geographical and nautical mile of the cartographer, as well as the "knot" of the sailor.

At Piraway Ferry no two of the raftsmen and lumbermen, ignorant or educated, would give the same distance, either upon the lengths of surveyed roads or unmeasured rivers. "It is one hundred and sixty-five miles by river from Piraway Ferry to Conwayborough," said one who had travelled the route for years. The most moderate estimate made was that of ninety miles by river. The reader, therefore, must not accuse me of over-stating distances while absent from the seaboard, as my friends of the Coast Survey Bureau have not yet penetrated into these interior regions with their theodolites, plane-tables, and telametre-rods. To the canoeist, who is ambitious to score up _miles_ instead of collecting geographical notes, these wild rivers afford an excellent opportunity to satisfy his aims.

From sixty to eighty miles can be rowed in ten hours as easily as forty miles can be gone over upon a river of slow current in the northern states. There is, I am sorry to say, a cla.s.s of American travellers who "_do_" all the capitals of Europe in the same business-like way, and if they have anything to say in regard to every-day life in the countries through which they pa.s.s, they forget to thank the compiler of the guide-book for the information they possess.

There was but one room in the cabin of my new acquaintance, who represented that cla.s.s of piny-woods people called in the south--because they subsist largely upon corn,--Corn Crackers, or Crackers. These Crackers are the "poor white folks" of the planter, and "de white trash"

of the old slave, who now as a freedman is beginning to feel the responsibility of his position.

These Crackers are a very kind-hearted people, but few of them can read or write. The children of the negro, filled with curiosity and a new-born pride, whenever opportunity permits, attend the schools in large numbers; but the very indolent white man seems to be dest.i.tute of all ambition, and his children, in many places in the south, following close in the father's footsteps, grow up in an almost unimaginable ignorance.

The news of the arrival of the little Maria Theresa at Piraway Ferry spread with astonishing rapidity through the woods, and on Sunday, after "de shoutings," as the negroes call their meetings, were over, the blacks came in numbers to see "dat Yankee-man's paper canno."

These simple people eyed me from head to foot with a grave sort of curiosity, their great mouths open, displaying pearly teeth of which a white man might well be proud. "You is a good man, capt'n--we knows dat," they said; and when I asked why, the answer showed their child-like faith. "'Cause you couldn't hab come all dis way in a _paper_ boat if de Lord hadn't helped you. _He_ dono help only good folks."

The Cracker also came with his children to view the wonder, while the raftsmen were so struck with the advantages of my double paddle, which originated with the inhabitants of the Arctic regions, that they laid it upon a board and drew its outlines with chalk. They vowed they would introduce it upon the river.

These Crackers declared it would take more than "de shoutings," or any other religious service, to improve the moral condition of the blacks.

They openly accused the colored preachers of disturbing the nocturnal rest of their hens and turkeys; and as to hog-stealing and cow-killing, "Why, we won't have any critters left ef this carpet-bag government lasts much longer!" they feelingly exclaimed.

"We does nothing to n.o.body. We lets the n.i.g.g.e.rs alone; but n.i.g.g.e.rs will steal--they can't help it, the poor devils; it's in 'em. Now, ef they eats us out of house and home, what can a poor man do? They puts 'em up for justices of peace, and sends 'em to the legislature, when they can't read more'n us; and they do say it's 'cause we fit in the Confederate sarvice that they razes the n.i.g.g.e.r over our heads. Now, does the folkes up north like to see white people tyrannized over by n.i.g.g.e.rs? Jes tell 'em when you go back, stranger, that we's got soulds like yours up north, and we's got feelings too, by thunder! jes like other white men.

This was a white man's country once--now it's all n.i.g.g.e.rs and dogs. Why, them n.i.g.g.e.rs in the legislature has spit-boxes lined with gold to spit in! What's this country a-coming to? We wish the n.i.g.g.e.rs no harm if they lets our hogs and chickens alone."

After this tirade it was amusing to see how friendly the whites and blacks were. The Crackers conversed with these children of Ham, who had been stealing their hams for so long a time, in the most kindly way, realizing, perhaps, that they had various peculiar traits of their own, and must, after all, endure their neighbors.

A traveller should place facts before his readers, and leave to them the drawing of the moral. Northern men and women who go to the southern states and reside for even the short s.p.a.ce of a year or two, invariably change their life-long views and principles regarding the negro as a moral and social creature. When these people return to their homes in Maine or Ma.s.sachusetts (as did the representatives of the Granges of the northern states after they had visited South Carolina in 1875) a new light, derived from contact with _facts_, dawns upon them, while their surprised and untravelled neighbors say: "_So you have become Southern in your views._ I never would have thought that of _you_."

The railroad has become one of the great mediums of enlightenment to mankind, and joins in a social fraternity the disunited elements of a country. G.o.d grant that the resources of the great South may soon be developed by the capital and free labor of the North. Our sister states of the South, exhausted by the struggles of the late war which resulted in consolidating more firmly than ever the great Union, are now ready to receive every honest effort to develop their wealth or cultivate their territory. Let every national patriot give up narrowness of views and sectional selfishness and become acquainted with (not the politicians) the people of the New South, and a harmony of feeling will soon possess the hearts of all true lovers of a government of the people.

The swamp tributaries were swelling the river into a very rapid torrent as I paddled away from the ferry on Monday, January 18. A warmer lat.i.tude having been reached, I could dispense with one blanket, and this I had presented to my kind host, who had refused to accept payment for his hospitality. He was very proud of his present, and said, feelingly, "No one shall touch this but me." His good wife had baked some of a rich and very nice variety of sweet-potatoes, unlike those we get in New Jersey or the other Middle States--which potatoes she kindly added to my stores. They are not dry or mealy when cooked, but seem saturated with honey. The poor woman's gift now occupied the s.p.a.ce formerly taken up by the blanket I had given her husband.

From this day, as lat.i.tude after lat.i.tude was crossed on my way southward, I distributed every article I could spare, among these poor, kind-hearted people. Mr. Macgregor went in his Rob Roy canoe over the rivers of Europe, "diffusing cheerfulness and distributing Evangelical tracts." I had no room for tracts, and if I had followed the example of my well-intentioned predecessor in canoeing, it would have served the cause of truth or creed but little. The Crackers could not read, and but few of the grown negroes had been taught letters. They did not want books, but tobacco. Men and women hailed me from the banks as I glided along in my canoe, with, "Say, captain, hab you eny 'bacca or snuff for dis chile?" Poor humanity! The Cracker and the freedman fill alike their places according to the light they possess. Do we, who have been taught from our youth sacred things, do more than this? Do we love our neighbor as ourself?

For twenty miles (local authority) I journeyed down the stream, without seeing a human being or a dwelling-place, to Stanley's house and the bridge; from which I urged the canoe thirty-five miles further, pa.s.sing an old field on a bluff, when darkness settled on the swamps, and a heavy mist rose from the waters and enveloped the forests in its folds.

With not a trace of land above water I groped about, running into what appeared to be openings in the submerged land, only to find my canoe tangled in thickets. It was useless to go further, and I prepared to ascend to the forks of a giant tree, with a light rope, to be used for lashing my body into a safe position, when a long, low cry engaged my attention.

"Waugh! ho! ho! ho! peig--peig--pe-ig--pe-ig," came through the still, thick air. It was not an owl, nor a catamount that cried thus; nor was it the bark of a fox. It was the voice of a Cracker calling in his hogs from the forest. This sound was indeed pleasant to my ears, for I knew the upland was near, and that a warm fire awaited my benumbed limbs in the cabin of this unknown man. Pushing the canoe towards the sound, and feeling the submerged border of the swamp with my paddle, I struck the upland where it touched the water, and disembarking, felt my way along a well-trodden path to a little clearing. Here a drove of hogs were crowding around their owner, who was scattering kernels of corn about him as he vociferated, "pe-ig--pe-ig--pe-ig--pig--pig--pig." We stood face to face, yet neither could see the face of the other in the darkness. I told my tale, and asked where I could find a sheltered spot to camp.

"Stranger," slowly replied the Cracker, "my cabin's close at hand. Come home with me. It's a bad night for a man to lay out in; and the n.i.g.g.e.rs would steal your traps if they knew you had anything worth taking. Come with me."

In the tall pines near at hand was a cabin of peeled rails, the c.h.i.n.ks between them being stuffed with moss. A roof of cypress shingles kept the rain out. The log chimney, which was plastered with mud, was built outside of the walls and against an end of the rustic-looking structure.

The wide-mouthed fireplace sent forth a blaze of light as we entered the poor man's home. I saw in the nicely swept floor, the clean bed-spreads, and the general neatness of the place, the character of Wilson Edge's wife.

"Hog and hominy's our food here in the piny woods," said Mr. Edge, as his wife invited us to the little table; "and we've a few eggs now and then to eat with sweet potatoes, but it's up-hill work to keep the n.i.g.g.e.rs from killing every fowl and animal we have. The carpet-bag politicians promised them every one, for his vote, forty acres of land and a mule. They sed as how the northern government was a-going to give it to um; but the poor devils never got any thanks even for their votes.

They had been stuffed with all sorts of notions by the carpet-baggers, and I don't blame um for putting on airs and trying to rule us. It's human natur, that's all. We don't blame the n.i.g.g.e.rs half so much as those who puts it in their heads to do so; but it's hard times we've had, we poor woods folks. They took our children for the cussed war, to fight fur n.i.g.g.e.rs and rich people as owned um.

"We never could find out what all the fuss was about; but when Jeff Davis made a law to exempt every man from the army who owned fifteen n.i.g.g.e.rs, then our blood riz right up, and we sez to our neighbors, 'This ere thing's a-getting to be a rich man's quarrel and a poor man's fight.' After all they dragged off my boy to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and killed him a fighting for what? Why, for rich n.i.g.g.e.r owners. Our young men hid in the swamps, but they were hunted up and forced into the army. n.i.g.g.e.rs has been our ruin. Ef a white man takes a case before a n.i.g.g.e.r justice, he gives the n.i.g.g.e.r everything, and the white man has to stand one side. Now, would you folks up north like to have a n.i.g.g.e.r justice who can't read nor count ten figgurs?"

I tried to comfort the poor man, by a.s.suring him that outside of the political enemies of our peace, the ma.s.ses in the north were honestly inclined towards the south now that slavery was at an end; and that wrong could not long prevail, with the cheerful prospect of a new administration, and the removal of all unconst.i.tutional forces that preyed upon the south.

The two beds in the single room of the cabin were occupied by the family; while I slept upon the floor by the fire, with my blankets for a couch and a roll of homespun for a pillow, which the women called "_heading_." They often said, "Let me give you some heading for your bed." We waited until eight o'clock the next day for the mists to rise from the swamps. My daily trouble was now upon me. How could I remunerate a southerner for his cost of keeping me, when not, in the true sense of the word, an invited guest to his hospitality?

Wilson Edge sat by the fire, while his wife and little ones were preparing to accompany me to see the paper boat. "Mr. Edge," I stammered, "you have treated me with great kindness, your wife has been put to some inconvenience, as I came in so unexpected a manner, and you will really oblige me if you will accept a little money for all this; though money cannot pay for your hospitality. Grant my wish, and you will send me away with a light heart." The poor Cracker lowered his head and slowly ran his fingers through his coal black hair. For a moment he seemed studying a reply, and then he spoke as though HE represented the whole generous heart of the south.

"_Stranger_," he slowly articulated, "_Stranger, I have known white men to be n.i.g.g.e.rs enough to take a stranger's money for lodgings and vittles, but I am not that man_."

We found the canoe as it had been left the night before, and I was soon pulling down the river. The great wilderness was traversed thirty miles to the county town of Conwayborough, where the negroes roared with laughter at the working of the double paddle, as I shot past the landing-place where cotton and naval stores were piled, waiting to be lightered nine miles to Pot Bluff,--so called from the fact of a pot being lost from a vessel near it,--which place is reached by vessels from New York drawing twelve feet of water. Though still a long distance from the ocean, I was beginning to feel its tidal influences. At Pot Bluff, the landing and comfortable home of its owner, Mr. Z. W.

Dusenberry, presented a pleasant relief after the monotony of the great pine forests. This enterprising business man made my short stay a very pleasant one.

Wednesday, January 20th, was cold for this lat.i.tude, and ice formed in thin sheets in the water-pails. Twenty-two miles below Pot Bluff, Bull Creek enters the Waccamaw from the Peedee River. At the mouth of this connecting watercourse is Tip Top, the first rice plantation of the Waccamaw. The Peedee and its sister stream run an almost parallel course from Bull Creek to Winyah Bay, making their debouchure close to the city of Georgetown. Steam saw-mills and rice plantations take the place of the forests from a few miles below Tip Top to the vicinity of Georgetown.

Mr. M. L. Blakely, of New York, one of the largest shingle manufacturers of the south, occupied as his headquarters the Bates Hill Plantation, on the Peedee. This gentleman had invited me, through the medium of the post-office, to visit him in the rice-growing regions of South Carolina.

To reach his home I took the short "cut-off" which Bull Creek offered, and entered upon the strongest of head-currents. The thick, yellow, muddy torrent of the Peedee rushed through Bull Creek with such volume, that I wondered if it left much water on the other side, to give character to the river, as it followed its own channel to Winyah Bay.

One and a half miles of vigorous paddling brought me to a branch of the watercourse, which is much narrower than the main one, and is consequently called Little Bull Creek. This also comes from the Peedee River, and its source is nearer to the Bates Hill plantation than the main Bull Creek. To urge the canoe up this narrow stream three miles and a half to the parent river Peedee, was a most trying ordeal. At times the boat would not move a hundred feet in five minutes, and often, as my strength seemed failing me, I caught the friendly branches of trees, and held on to keep the canoe from being whirled down the current towards the Waccamaw. After long and persistent efforts had exhausted my strength, I was about to seek for a resting-place in the swamp, when a view of the broad Peedee opened before me, and with vigorous strokes of the paddle the canoe slowly approached the mighty current. A moment more and it was within its grasp, and went flying down the turbulent stream at the rate of ten miles an hour.

A loud halloo greeted me from the swamp, where a party of negro shingle-makers were at work. They manned their boat, a long cypress dug-out, and followed me. Their employer, who proved to be the gentleman whose abiding-place I was now rapidly approaching, sat in the stern. We landed together before the old plantation-house, which had been occupied a few years before by members of the wealthy and powerful rice-planting aristocracy of the Peedee, but was now the temporary home of a northern man, who was busily employed in guiding the labors of his four hundred freedmen in the swamps of North and South Carolina.

The paper canoe had now entered the regions of the rice-planter. Along the low banks of the Peedee were diked marshes where, before the civil war, each estate produced from five thousand to forty thousand bushels of rice annually, and the lords of rice were more powerful than those of cotton, though cotton was king. 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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es of Winyah Bay towards the sea. Near Battery White, on the right sh.o.r.e, 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.