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 shores of
Winyah Bay towards the sea.
Near Battery
White, on the right shore, 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.
When near the inlet, the rice-plantation
marshes skirted the shore for some distance.
Out of these wet lands flowed a little stream,
called Mosquito Creek, which once connected
the North Santee River with Winyah Bay, and
served as a boundary to South Island. The
creek was very crooked, and the ebb-tide strong.
When more than halfway to Santee River I was
forced to leave the stream, as it had become
closed by tidal deposits and rank vegetation.
The ditches of rice plantations emptied their
drainage of the lowlands into Mosquito Creek.
Following a wide ditch to the right, through fields
of rich alluvial soil, which had been wrested by
severe toil from nature, the boat soon reached
the rice-mill of Commodore Richard Lowndes.
A little further on, and situated in a noble grove
of live-oaks, which were draped in the weird
festoons of Spanish moss, on the upland arose
the stately home of the planter, who still kept his
plantation in cultivation, though on a scale of less
magnitude than formerly. It was, indeed, a
pleasant evening that I passed in the company of the
refined members of the old commodore's
household, and with a pang of regret the next day I
paddled along the main canal of the lowlands,
casting backward glances at the old house, with
its grand old trees.
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