The Two Creeks And The Connecting
Canal 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 asserted 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
shores, 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, hut the shore 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. Circumstances 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.
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