The Genial
Editor Of The "News And Courier" Promised To
Notify The People Of My Departure, And Have The
Citizens Assembled To Give Me A South Carolina
Adieu.
To avoid this publicity, - so kindly
meant, - I quietly left the city from the south
side on Friday, February 12th, and ascended the
Ashley to Wappoo Creek, on the opposite bank
of the river.
A steamboat sent me a screaming salute as the
mouth of the Wappoo was reached, which made
me feel that, though in strange waters, friends
were all around me. I was now following one
of the salt-water, steamboat passages through
the great marshes of South Carolina. From
Wappoo Creek I took the "Elliot Cut" into the
broad Stono River, from behind the marshes of
which forests rose upon the low bluffs of the
upland, and rowed steadily on to Church Flats,
where Wide Awake, with its landing and store,
nestled on the bank.
A little further on the tides divided, one
ebbing through the Stono to the sea, the other
towards the North Edisto. "New Cut" connects
Church Flats with Wadmelaw Sound, a sheet
of water not over two miles in width and the
same distance in length. From the sound the
Wadmelaw River runs to the mouth of the
Dahoo. Vessels drawing eight and a half feet of
water can pass on full tides from Charleston over
the course I was following to the North Edisto
River.
Leaving Wadmelaw Sound, a deep bend of
the river was entered, when the bluffs of
Enterprise Landing, with its store and the ruins of
a burnt saw-mill, came into view on the left.
Having rowed more than thirty miles from the
Ashley, and finding that the proprietor of
Enterprise, a Connecticut gentleman, had made
preparations to entertain me, this day of pleasant
journeying ended.
The Cardinal-bird was carolling his mating
song when the members of this little New
England colony watched my departure down the
Wadmelaw the next morning. The course was
for the most part over the submerged phosphate
beds of South Carolina, where the remains of
extinct species were now excavated, furnishing
food for the worn-out soils of America and
Europe, and interesting studies and speculations for
men of science. The Dahoo River was reached
soon after leaving Enterprise. Here the North
Edisto, a broad river, passes the mouth of the
Dahoo, in its descent to the sea, which is about
ten miles distant.
For two miles along the Dahoo the porpoises
gave me strong proof of their knowledge of the
presence of the paper canoe by their rough
gambols, but being now in quiet inland waters,
I could laugh at these strange creatures as they
broke from the water around the boat. At four
o'clock P. M. the extensive marshes of Jehossee
Island were reached, and I approached the
village of the plantation through a short canal.
Out of the rice-fields of rich, black alluvium
rose an area of higher land, upon which were
situated the mansion and village of Governor
Aiken, where he, in 1830, commenced his duties
as rice-planter.
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