Voyage of the Paper Canoe Part 15

"All hands" came from the forecastle, and Finland mates and Finland sailors, speaking both English and Russian, crowded to the rail to receive the paper canoe, which had first been described to them by English newspapers when the vessel lay in a British port, awaiting the charter-party which afterwards sent them to Bull River, South Carolina, for a load of phosphates.

The jolly crew lowered buntlines and clewlines, to which I attached my boat's stores. These were hoisted up the high sides of the ship, and, after bending on a line to the bow and stern rings of the canoe, I ascended by the ladder, while Captain Johs. Bergelund and his mates claimed the pleasure of landing the paper canoe on the deck of the Rurik. The tiny sh.e.l.l looked very small as she rested on the broad, white decks of the emperor of Russia's old steam yacht, which bore the name of the founder of the Russian empire. Though now a bark and not a steamer, though a freighter and not a royal yacht, the Rurik looked every inch a government vessel, for her young captain, with a sailor's pride, kept her in a thorough state of cleanliness and order. We went to supper. The captain, his mates, and the stranger gathered around the board, while the generous sailor brought out his curious bottles and put them by the side of the still more curious dishes of food.

All my surroundings were those of the country of the midnight sun, and I should have felt more bewildered than when in the fog I viewed and chased this spectral-looking ship, had not Captain Bergelund, in most excellent English, entertained me with a flow of conversation which put me at my ease. He discoursed of Finland, where lakes covered the country from near Abo, its chief city, to the far north, where the summer days are "nearly all night long."

Painting in high colors the delights of his native land, he begged me to visit it. Finally, as midnight drew near, this genial sailor insisted upon putting me in his own comfortable state-room, while he slept upon a lounge in the cabin.

One mile above the Rurik's anchorage was the phosphate-mill of the Pacific Company, which was supplying Captain Bergelund, by lighters, with his freight of unground fertilizer.

The next morning I took leave of the Rurik, but, instead of descending the Bull River to the Coosaw, I determined to save time by crossing the peninsula between the two rivers by means of two short creeks which were connected at their sources by a very short ca.n.a.l near "the mines" of the Phosphate Company. When I entered Horse Island Creek, at eleven o'clock, the tide was on the last of the ebb, and I sat in the canoe a long time awaiting the flood to float me up the wide ditch, which would conduct me to the creek that emptied into the Coosaw. Upon the banks of the ca.n.a.l three hours were lost waiting for the tide to give me one foot of water, when I rowed into the second watercourse, and late in the afternoon entered the wide Coosaw. The two creeks and the connecting ca.n.a.l are called the Haulover Creek.

As I turned up the Coosaw, and skirted the now submerged marshes of its left bank, two dredging-machines were at work up the river raising the remains of the marine monsters of antiquity. The strong wind and swashing seas being in my favor, the canoe soon arrived opposite the spot of upland I had so longed to reach the previous night.

This was Chisolm's Landing, back of which were the phosphate works of the Coosaw Mine Company. The inspector of phosphates, Mr. John Hunn, offered me the hospitality of Alligator Hall, where he and some of the gentlemen employed by the company resided in bachelor retirement. My host described a mammal's tooth that weighed nearly fourteen pounds, which had been taken from a phosphate mine; it had been sent to a public room at Beaufort, South Carolina. A fossil shark's tooth, weighing four and a half pounds, was also found, and a learned ichthyologist has a.s.serted that the owner of this remarkable relic of the past must have been one hundred feet in length.

Beaufort was near at hand, and could be easily reached by entering Brickyard Creek, the entrance of which was on the right bank of the Coosaw, nearly opposite Chisolm's Landing. It was nearly six miles by this creek to Beaufort, and from that town to Port Royal Sound, by following Beaufort River, was a distance of eleven miles. The mouth of Beaufort River is only two miles from the sea. Preferring to follow a more interior water route than the Beaufort one, the canoe was rowed up the Coosaw five miles to Whale Branch, which is crossed by the Port Royal railroad bridge. Whale Branch, five miles in length, empties into Broad River, which I descended thirteen miles, to the lower end of Daw Island, on its right bank. Here, in this region of marshy sh.o.r.es, the Chechessee River and the Broad River mingle their strong currents in Port Royal Sound. It was dusk when the sound was entered from the extreme end of Daw Island, where it became necessary to cross immediately to Skull Creek, at Hilton Head Island, or go into camp for the night.

I looked down the sound six miles to the broad Atlantic, which was sending in clouds of mist on a fresh breeze. I gazed across the mouth of the Chechessee, and the sound at the entrance of the port of refuge. I desired to traverse nearly three miles of this rough water. I would gladly have camped, but the sh.o.r.e I was about to leave offered to submerge me with the next high water. No friendly hammock of trees could be seen as I glided from the shadow of the high rushes of Daw Island.

Circ.u.mstances decided the point in debate, and I rowed rapidly into the sound. The canoe had not gone half a mile when the Chechessee River opened fully to view, and a pretty little hammock, with two or three shanties beneath its trees, could be plainly seen on Daw's Island.

It was now too late to return and ascend the river to the hammock, for the sound was disturbed by the freshening breeze from the sea blowing against the ebb-tide, which was increased in power by the outflowing volume of water from the wide Chechessee. It required all the energy I possessed to keep the canoe from being overrun by the swashy, sharp-pointed seas. Once or twice I thought my last struggle for life had come, but a merciful Power gave me the strength and coolness that this trying ordeal required, and I somehow weathered the dangerous oyster reefs above Skull Creek, and landed at "Seabrook Plantation,"

upon Hilton Head Island, near two or three old houses, one of which was being fitted up as a store by Mr. Kleim, of the First New York Volunteers, who had lived on the island since 1861. Mr. Kleim took me to his bachelor quarters, where the wet cargo of the Maria Theresa was dried by the kitchen fireplace.

The next day, February 18, I left Seabrook and followed Skull Creek to Mackay's Creek, and, pa.s.sing the mouth of May River, entered Calibogue Sound, where a sudden tempest arose and drove me into a creek which flowed out of the marshes of Bull Island. A few negro huts were discovered on a low mound of earth. The blacks told me their hammock was called Bird Island.

The tempest lasted all day, and as no shelter could be found on the creek, a darky hauled my canoe on a cart a couple of miles to Bull Creek, which enters into Cooper River, one of the watercourses I was to enter from Calibogue Sound. Upon reaching the wooded sh.o.r.es of Bull Creek, my carter introduced me to the head man of the settlement, a weazened-looking little old creature called Cuffy, who, though respectful in his demeanor to "de Yankee-mans," was cross and overbearing to the few families occupying the shanties in the magnificent grove of live-oaks which shaded them.

Cuffy's cook-house, or kitchen, which was a log structure measuring nine by ten feet, with posts only three feet high, was the only building which could be emptied of its contents for my accommodation. Our contract or lease was a verbal one, Cuffy's terms being "whateber de white man likes to gib an ole n.i.g.g.e.r." Cuffy cut a big switch, and sent in his "darter," a girl of about fourteen years, to clean out the shanty. When she did not move fast enough to suit the old man's wishes, he switched her over the shoulders till it excited my pity; but the girl seemed to take the beating as an every-day amus.e.m.e.nt, for it made no impression on her hard skull and thick skin.

After commencing to "keep house," the old women came to sell me eggs and beg for "bacca." They requested me never to throw away my coffee-grounds, as it made coffee "good 'nuf for black folks." I distributed some of my stores among them, and, after cutting rushes and boughs for my bed, turned in for the night.

These negroes had been raising Sea-Island cotton, but the price having declined to five cents a pound, they could not get twenty-five cents a day for their labor by cultivating it.

The fierce wind subsided before dawn, but a heavy fog covered the marshes and the creek. Cuffy's "settlement" turned out before sunrise to see me off; and the canoe soon reached the broad Cooper River, which I ascended in the misty darkness by following close to the left bank. Four miles up the Cooper River from Calibogue Sound there is a pa.s.sage through the marshes from the Cooper to New River, which is called Ram's Horn Creek. On the right of its entrance a well-wooded hammock rises from the marsh, and is called Page Island. About midway between the two rivers and along this crooked thoroughfare is another piece of upland called Pine Island, inhabited by the families of two boat-builders.

While navigating Cooper River, as the heavy mists rolled in clouds over the quiet waters, a sailboat, rowed by negroes, emerged from the gloom and as suddenly disappeared. I shouted after them: "Please tell me the name of the next creek." A hoa.r.s.e voice came back to me from the cloud: "Pull and be d----d." Then all was still as night again. To solve this seemingly uncourteous reply, so unusual in the south, I consulted the ma.n.u.script charts which the Charleston pilots had kindly drawn for my use, and found that the negroes had spoken geographically as well as truthfully, for Pine Island Creek is known to the watermen as "Pull and be d----d Creek," on account of its tortuous character, and chiefly because, as the tides head in it, if a boat enters it from one river with a favorable tide, it has a strong head current on the other side of the middle ground to oppose it. Thus pulling at the oars at some parts of the creek becomes hard work for the boatmen; hence this name, which, though profane, may be considered geographical.

After leaving the Cooper River, the watercourses to Savannah were discolored by red or yellow mud. From Pine Island I descended New River two miles and a half to Wall's Cut, which is only a quarter of a mile in length, and through which I entered Wright's River, following it a couple of miles to the broad, yellow, turbulent current of the Savannah.

My thoughts now naturally turned to the early days of steamboat enterprise, when this river, as well as the Hudson, was conspicuous; for though the steamer Savannah was not the first steam-propelled vessel which cut the waves of the Atlantic, she was the first steamer that ever crossed it. Let us examine historical data. Colonel John Stevens, of New York, built the steamboat Phoenix about the year 1808, and was prevented from using it upon the Hudson River by the Fulton and Livingston monopoly charter.

The Phoenix made an ocean voyage to the Delaware River. The first English venture was that of the steamer Caledonia, which made a pa.s.sage to Holland in 1817. The London Times of May 11, 1819, printed in its issue of that date the following item:

"GREAT EXPERIMENT.--A new vessel of three hundred tons has been built at New York for the express purpose of carrying pa.s.sengers across the Atlantic. She is to come to Liverpool direct."

This ship-rigged steamer was the "Savannah," and the bold projector of this experiment of sending a steamboat across the Atlantic was Daniel Dodd. The Savannah was built in New York, by Francis Ficket, for Mr.

Dodd. Stephen Vail, of Morristown, New Jersey, built her engines, and on the 22d of August, 1818, she was launched, gliding gracefully into the element which was to bear her to foreign lands, there to be crowned with the laurels of success. On May 25th this purely American-built vessel left Savannah, and glided out from this waste of marshes, under the command of Captain Moses Rogers, with Stephen Rogers as navigator. The port of New London, Conn., had furnished these able seamen.

The steamer reached Liverpool June 20th, the pa.s.sage having occupied twenty-six days, upon eighteen of which she had used her paddles. A son of Mr. Dodd once told me of the sensation produced by the arrival of a smoking vessel on the coast of Ireland, and how Lieutenant John Bowie, of the king's cutter Kite, sent a boat-load of sailors to board the Savannah to a.s.sist her crew to extinguish the fires of what his Majesty's officers supposed to be a burning ship.

The Savannah, after visiting Liverpool, continued her voyage on July 23d, and reached St. Petersburg in safety. Leaving the latter port on October 10th, this adventurous craft completed the round voyage upon her arrival at Savannah, November 30th.

I pulled up the Savannah until within five miles of the city, and then left the river on its south side, where old rice-plantations are first met, and entered St. Augustine Creek, which is the steamboat thoroughfare of the inland route to Florida. Just outside the city of Savannah, near its beautiful cemetery, where tall trees with their graceful drapery of Spanish moss screen from wind and sun the quiet resting-places of the dead, my canoe was landed, and stored in a building of the German Greenwich Shooting Park, where Mr. John h.e.l.lwig, in a most hospitable manner, cared for it and its owner.

While awaiting the arrival of letters at the Savannah post-office, many of the ladies of that beautiful city came out to see the paper canoe.

They seemed to have the mistaken idea that my little craft had come from the distant Dominion of Canada over the Atlantic Ocean. They also looked upon the voyage of the paper canoe as a very sentimental thing, while the canoeist had found it an intensely practical affair, though occasionally relieved by incidents of romantic or amusing character. As the ladies cl.u.s.tered round the boat while it rested upon the centre-table of Mr. h.e.l.lwig's parlor, they questioned me freely.

"Tell us," they said, "what were your thoughts while you rowed upon the broad ocean in the lonely hours of night?"

Though unwilling to break their pleasing illusions, I was obliged to inform them that a sensible canoeist is usually enjoying his needed rest in some camp, or sleeping in some sheltered place,--under a roof if possible,--after it is too dark to travel in safety; and as to ocean travelling, the canoe had only once entered upon the Atlantic Ocean, and then through a mistake.

"But what subjects occupy your thoughts as you row, and row, and row all day by yourself, in this little ship?" a motherly lady inquired.

"To tell you honestly, ladies, I must say that when I am in shallow watercourses, with the tides usually ebbing at the wrong time for my convenience, I am so full of anxiety about getting wrecked on the reefs of sharp c.o.o.n-oysters, that I am wishing myself in deep water; and when my route forces me into the deep water of sounds, and the surface becomes tossed into wild disorder by strong currents and stronger winds, and the porpoises pay me their little attentions, chasing the canoe, flapping their tails, and showing their sportive dispositions, I think longingly of those same shoal creeks, and wish I was once more in their shallow waters."

"We ladies have prayed for your safety," said a kind-looking German lady, "and we will pray that your voyage may have a happy and successful end."

When the ladies left, two Irish laborers, dressed in sombre black, with high hats worn with the air of dignity, examined the boat. There was an absence of the sparkle of fun usually seen in the Irish face, for this was a serious occasion. They did not see any romance or sentiment in the voyage, but took a broad, geographical view of the matter. They stood silently gazing at the canoe with the same air of solemnity they would have given a corpse. Then one addressed the other, as though the owner of the craft was entirely out of the hearing of their conversation.

Said No. 1, "And what did I tell ye, Pater?" "And so ye did," replied No. 2. "And didn't I say so?" continued No. 1. "Of course ye did; and wasn't me of the same mind, to be sure?" responded No. 2. "Yes, I told ye as how it is the men of _these_ times is greater than the men of ould times. There was the great Coolumbus, who came over in three ships to see Americky. What did he know about _paper_ boats? Nothing at all, at all. He c.u.m over in big ships, while this young feller has c.u.m all the way from Canada. I tell ye the men of ould times was not up to the men of these times. Thin there's Captain Boyton, who don't use any boat or ship at all, at all, but goes a-_swimming_ in rubber clothes to keep him dry all over the Atlantic Oshin. Jis' look, man, how he landed on the sh.o.r.es of ould Ireland not long since. Now what's Coolumbus, or any other man of the past ages, to him? Coolumbus could not hold a candle to Boyton! No, I tell ye agen that the men of this age is greater than the men of the past ages." "And," broke in No. 2, "there's a Britisher who's gone to the River Niles in a canoe." "The _River Niles_!" hotly exclaimed No. 1; "don't waste your breath on that thing. It's no _new_ thing at all, at all. It was diskivered a long time ago, and n.o.body cares a fig for it now." "Yet," responded No. 2, "some of those old-times people were very enterprising. There was that great traveller Robinson Crusoe: ye must confess he was a great man for _his_ time."

"The same who wint to the South Sea Islands and settled there?" asked the first biographer. "The _very same man_," replied No. 2, with animation.

This instructive conversation was here interrupted by a party of ladies and gentlemen, who in turn gave their views of canoe and canoeist.

CHAPTER XIII.

FROM THE SAVANNAH RIVER TO FLORIDA.

ROUTE TO THE SEA ISLANDS OF GEORGIA.--STORM-BOUND ON GREEN ISLAND.--OSSABAW ISLAND.--ST. CATHERINE'S SOUND.--SAPELO ISLAND.--THE MUD OF MUD RIVER.--NIGHT IN A NEGRO CABIN.--"DE SHOUTINGS" ON DOBOY ISLAND.--BROUGHTON ISLAND.--ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS.--INTERVIEW WITH AN ALLIGATOR.--A NIGHT IN JOINTER HAMMOCK.--c.u.mBERLAND ISLAND AND ST. MARY'S RIVER.--FAREWELL TO THE SEA.

On February 24th, the voyage was again resumed. My route lay through the coast islands of Georgia, as far south as the state boundary, c.u.mberland Sound, and the St. Mary's River. This part of the coast is very interesting, and is beautifully delineated on the Coast Charts No. 56-57 of the United States Coast Survey, which were published the year after my voyage ended.

Steamers run from Savannah through these interesting interior water-ways to the ports of the St. John's River, Florida, and by taking this route the traveller can escape a most uninteresting railroad journey from Savannah to Jacksonville, where sandy soils and pine forests present an uninviting prospect to the eye. A little dredging, in a few places along the steamboat route, should be done at national cost, to make this a more convenient and expeditious tidal route for vessels.

Leaving Greenwich, Bonaventure, and Thunderbolt behind me on the upland, the canoe entered the great marshy district of the coast along the Wilmington and Skiddaway rivers to Skiddaway Narrows, which is a contracted, crooked watercourse connecting the Skiddaway with the Burnside River. The low lands were made picturesque by hammocks, some of which were cultivated.

In leaving the Burnside for the broad Vernon River, as the canoe approached the sea, one of the sudden tempests which frequently vex these coast-waters arose, and drove me to a hammock in the marshes of Green Island, on the left bank and opposite the mouth of the Little Ogeechee River. Green Island has been well cultivated in the past, but is now only the summer home of Mr. Styles, its owner. Two or three families of negroes inhabited the cabins and looked after the property of the absent proprietor.

I waded to my knees in the mud before the canoe could be landed, and, as it stormed all night, I slept on the floor of the humble cot of the negro Echard Holmes, having first treated the household to crackers and coffee. The negroes gathered from other points to examine the canoe, and, hearing that I was from the north, one grizzly old darky begged me to "carry" his complaints to Washington.

"De goberment," he said, "has been berry good to wees black folks. It gib us our freedom,--all berry well; but dar is an noder ting wees wants; dat is, wees wants General Grant to make tings _stashionary_. De storekeeper gibs a poor n.i.g.g.e.r only one dollar fur bushel corn, sometimes not so much. Den he makes poor n.i.g.g.e.r gib him tree dollars fur bag hominy, sometimes more'n dat. Wees wants de goberment to make tings _stashionary_. Make de storekeeper gib black man one dollar and quarter fur de bushel of corn, and make him sell de poor n.i.g.g.e.r de bag hominy fur much less dan tree dollars. Make all tings _stashionary_. Den dar's one ting more. Tell de goberment to do fur poor darky 'nodder ting,--make de ole ma.s.sa say to me, 'You's been good slave in ole times,--_berry_ good slave; now I gib you one, two, tree, _five_ acres of land for yoursef.' Den ole n.i.g.g.e.r be happy, and ma.s.sa be happy too; den bof of um bees happy. Hab you a leetle bacca fur dis ole man?"

From the Styles mansion it was but three miles to Ossabaw Sound. Little Don Island and Racc.o.o.n Key are in the mouth of the Vernon. Between the two flat islands is a deep pa.s.sage through which the tides rush with great force; it is called h.e.l.l Gate. On the south side of Racc.o.o.n Key the Great Ogeechee River pours its strong volume of water into Ossabaw Sound.