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 woodpecker 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 passed 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 shore 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 pronunciation 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 passages 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 canal would connect this river and its lumber regions with Little River and the sea.

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