Keep To The Main
Stream, Though It Be More Crooked And Longer.
If You Take To The Cut-Offs, You May Get Into
Passages That Will Lead You Off Into The Swamps
And Into Interior Bayous, From Which You Will
Never Emerge.
Men have starved to death in
such places."
So I followed the winding stream, which
turned back upon itself, running north and south,
and east and west, as if trying to box the
compass by following the sun in its revolution. After
paddling down one bend, I could toss a stick
through the trees into the stream where the canoe
had cleaved its waters a quarter of a mile
behind me.
The thought of what I should do in this
landless region if my frail shell, in its rapid flight to
the sea, happened to be pierced by a snag, was,
to say the least, not a comforting one. On what
could I stand to repair it? To climb a tree
seemed, in such a case, the only resource; and
then what anxious waiting there would be for
some cypress-shingle maker, in his dug-out
canoe, to come to the rescue, and take the traveller
from his dangerous lodgings between heaven and
earth; or it might be that no one would pass that
way, and the weary waiting would be even unto
death.
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.
For the first time in my experience as a
traveller I had entered a country where the miles
were short. When fifteen years old I made my
first journey alone and on foot from the vicinity
of Boston to the White Mountains of New
Hampshire. This boyish pedestrian trip
occupied about twenty-one days, and covered some
three hundred miles of hard tramping. New
England gives honest measure on the
finger-posts along her highways. The traveller learns
by well-earned experience the length of her
miles; but in the wilderness of the south there
is no standard of five thousand two hundred and
eighty feet to a statute mile, and the watermen
along the sea-coast are ignorant of the fact that
one-sixtieth of a degree of latitude (about six
thousand and eighty feet) is the geographical
and nautical mile of the cartographer, as well
as the "knot" of the sailor.
At Piraway Ferry no two of the raftsmen and
lumbermen, ignorant or educated, would give the
same distance, either upon the lengths of surveyed
roads or unmeasured rivers. "It is one hundred
and sixty-five miles by river from Piraway Ferry
to Conwayborough," said one who had travelled
the route for years. The most moderate estimate
made was that of ninety miles by river. The
reader, therefore, must not accuse me of
overstating distances while absent from the seaboard,
as my friends of the Coast Survey Bureau have
not yet penetrated into these interior regions with
their theodolites, plane-tables, and
telametrerods. To the canoeist, who is ambitious to score
up miles instead of collecting geographical notes,
these wild rivers afford an excellent opportunity
to satisfy his aims.
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