"I knows de cuts ob dem. I suffered at Fort
Wagner. Dis chile knows Massachusetts."
Two miles further on, Bull Creek served me
as a "cut-off," and half an hour after entering it
the tide was flooding against me. When Goat
Island Creek was passed on the left hand, knots
of pine forests rose picturesquely in places out
of the bottom-lands, and an hour later, at
Bennett's Point, on the right, I found the watercourse
a quarter of a mile in width.
The surroundings were of a lovely nature
during this day's journey. Here marshes,
diversified by occasional hammocks of timber dotting
their uninteresting wastes; there humble
habitations of whites and blacks appearing at intervals
in the forest growth. As I was destitute of a
finished chart of the Coast Survey, after rowing
along one side of Hutchinson's Island I became
bewildered in the maze of creeks which
penetrate the marshes that lie between Bennett's
Point and the coast.
Making a rough topographical sketch of the
country as I descended Hutchinson's Creek, or
Big River, - the latter appellation being the
most appropriate, as it is a very wide
watercourse, - I came upon a group of low islands,
and found upon one of them a plantation which
had been abandoned to the negroes, and the little
bluff upon which two or three rickety buildings
were situated was the last land which remained
unsubmerged during a high tide between the
plantation and the sea.
I was now in a quandary. I had left the
hospitable residence of Governor Aiken at ten o'clock
A. M., when I should have departed at sunrise in
order to have had time to enter and pass through
St. Helena Sound before night came on. The
prospect of obtaining shelter was indeed dismal.
Just at this time a loud shout from the negroes
on shore attracted my attention, and I rested
upon my oars, while a boat-load of women and
children paddled out to me.
"Is dat de little boat?" they asked, viewing
my craft with curious eyes. "And is dat boat
made of paper?" they continued, showing that
negro runners had posted the people, even in
these solitary regions, of the approach of the
paper canoe. I questioned these negro women
about the route, but each gave a different
answer as to the passage through the Horns to St.
Helena Sound. Hurrying on through tortuous
creeks, the deserted tract called "the Horns" was
entered, and until sunset I followed one short
stream after another, to its source in the reedy
plain, constantly retracing the route, with the
tide not yet ebbing strong enough to show me a
course to the sound. Presently it ebbed more
rapidly, and I followed the tide from one
intricacy to another, but never found the principal
thoroughfare.
While I was enveloped in reeds, and at a loss
which way to go, the soft ripple of breaking
waves struck my ear like sweet music. The sea
was telling me of its proximity. Carefully
balancing myself, I stood up in the cranky canoe,
and peering over the grassy thickets, saw before
me the broad waters of Helena Sound. The
fresh salt breeze from the ocean struck upon
my forehead, and nerved me to a renewal of my
efforts to get within a region of higher land, and
to a place of shelter.
The ebbing tide was yet high, and through
the forest of vegetation, and over the submerged
coast, I pushed the canoe into the sound. Now I
rowed as though for my life, closely skirting the
marshes, and soon entered waters covered by a
chart in my possession. My course was to skirt
the coast of the sound from where I had entered
it, and cross the mouths of the Combahee and
Bull rivers to the entrance of the broad Coosaw.
This last river I would ascend seven miles to the
first upland, and camp thereon until morning.
The tide was now against me, and the night
was growing darker, as the faithful craft was
forced along the marshes four miles to the mouth
of the Combahee River, which I had to ascend
half a mile to get rid of a shoal of frisky
porpoises, who were fishing in the current.
Then descending it on the opposite shore, I
rowed two miles further in the dark, but for half
an hour previous to my reaching the wide
debouchure of Bull River, some enormous
blackfish surged about me in the tideway and sounded
their nasal calls, while their more demonstrative
porpoise neighbors leaped from the water in the
misty atmosphere, and so alarmed me and
occupied my attention, that instead of crossing to the
Coosaw River, I unwittingly ascended the Bull,
and was soon lost in the contours of the river.
As I hugged the marshy borders of the stream
to escape the strong current of its channel, and
rowed on and on in the gloom, eagerly scanning
the high, sedge-fringed flats to find one little spot
of firm upland upon which I might land my
canoe and obtain a resting-spot for myself for
the night, the feeling that I was lost was not the
most cheerful to be imagined. In the thin fog
which arose from the warm water into the cool
night air, objects on the marshes assumed
fantastical shapes. A few reeds, taller than the rest,
had the appearance of trees twenty feet high.
So real did these unreal images seem, that I
drove my canoe against the soft, muddy bank,
repeatedly prompted to land in what seemed a
copse of low trees, but in every instance I was
deceived. Still I pulled up that mysterious
river, ignorant at the time of even its name,
praying only for one little spot of upland where
I might camp.
While thus employed, I peered over my
shoulder into the gloom, and beheld what
seemed to be a vision; for, out of a cloud of
mist rose the skeleton lines of a large ship,
with all its sails furled to the yards.
