Voyage of the Paper Canoe

From sixty to eighty miles can be rowed in ten hours as easily as forty miles can be gone over upon a river of slow current in the northern states. There is, I am sorry to say, a class of American travellers who "do" all the capitals of Europe in the same business-like way, and if they have anything to say in regard to every-day life in the countries through which they pass, they forget to thank the compiler of the guide-book for the information they possess.

There was but one room in the cabin of my new acquaintance, who represented that class of piny-woods people called in the south – because they subsist largely upon corn, – Corn Crackers, or Crackers. These Crackers are the "poor white folks" of the planter, and "de white trash" of the old slave, who now as a freedman is beginning to feel the responsibility of his position.

These Crackers are a very kind-hearted people, but few of them can read or write. The children of the negro, filled with curiosity and a new-born pride, whenever opportunity permits, attend the schools in large numbers; but the very indolent white man seems to be destitute of all ambition, and his children, in many places in the south, following close in the father's footsteps, grow up in an almost unimaginable ignorance.

The news of the arrival of the little Maria Theresa at Piraway Ferry spread with astonishing rapidity through the woods, and on Sunday, after "de shoutings," as the negroes call their meetings, were over, the blacks came in numbers to see "dat Yankee-man's paper canno."

These simple people eyed me from head to foot with a grave sort of curiosity, their great mouths open, displaying pearly teeth of which a white man might well be proud. "You is a good man, capt'n – we knows dat," they said; and when I asked why, the answer showed their child-like faith. "'Cause you couldn't hab come all dis way in a paper boat if de Lord hadn't helped you. He dono help only good folks."

The Cracker also came with his children to view the wonder, while the raftsmen were so struck with the advantages of my double paddle, which originated with the inhabitants of the Arctic regions, that they laid it upon a board and drew its outlines with chalk. They vowed they would introduce it upon the river.

These Crackers declared it would take more than "de shoutings," or any other religious service, to improve the moral condition of the blacks. They openly accused the colored preachers of disturbing the nocturnal rest of their hens and turkeys; and as to hog-stealing and cow-killing, "Why, we won't have any critters left ef this carpet-bag government lasts much longer!" they feelingly exclaimed.

"We does nothing to nobody. We lets the niggers alone; but niggers will steal – they can't help it, the poor devils; it's in 'em. Now, ef they eats us out of house and home, what can a poor man do? They puts 'em up for justices of peace, and sends 'em to the legislature, when they can't read more'n us; and they do say it's 'cause we fit in the Confederate sarvice that they razes the nigger over our heads. Now, does the folkes up north like to see white people tyrannized over by niggers? Jes tell 'em when you go back, stranger, that we's got soulds like yours up north, and we's got feelings too, by thunder! jes like other white men. This was a white man's country once – now it's all niggers and dogs. Why, them niggers in the legislature has spit-boxes lined with gold to spit in! What's this country a-coming to? We wish the niggers no harm if they lets our hogs and chickens alone."

After this tirade it was amusing to see how friendly the whites and blacks were. The Crackers conversed with these children of Ham, who had been stealing their hams for so long a time, in the most kindly way, realizing, perhaps, that they had various peculiar traits of their own, and must, after all, endure their neighbors.

A traveller should place facts before his readers, and leave to them the drawing of the moral. Northern men and women who go to the southern states and reside for even the short space of a year or two, invariably change their life-long views and principles regarding the negro as a moral and social creature. When these people return to their homes in Maine or Massachusetts (as did the representatives of the Granges of the northern states after they had visited South Carolina in 1875) a new light, derived from contact with facts, dawns upon them, while their surprised and untravelled neighbors say: "So you have become Southern in your views. I never would have thought that of you."

The railroad has become one of the great mediums of enlightenment to mankind, and joins in a social fraternity the disunited elements of a country. God grant that the resources of the great South may soon be developed by the capital and free labor of the North. Our sister states of the South, exhausted by the struggles of the late war which resulted in consolidating more firmly than ever the great Union, are now ready to receive every honest effort to develop their wealth or cultivate their territory. Let every national patriot give up narrowness of views and sectional selfishness and become acquainted with (not the politicians) the people of the New South, and a harmony of feeling will soon possess the hearts of all true lovers of a government of the people.

The swamp tributaries were swelling the river into a very rapid torrent as I paddled away from the ferry on Monday, January 18. A warmer latitude having been reached, I could dispense with one blanket, and this I had presented to my kind host, who had refused to accept payment for his hospitality. He was very proud of his present, and said, feelingly, "No one shall touch this but me." His good wife had baked some of a rich and very nice variety of sweet-potatoes, unlike those we get in New Jersey or the other Middle States – which potatoes she kindly added to my stores. They are not dry or mealy when cooked, but seem saturated with honey. The poor woman's gift now occupied the space formerly taken up by the blanket I had given her husband.

From this day, as latitude after latitude was crossed on my way southward, I distributed every article I could spare, among these poor, kind-hearted people. Mr. Macgregor went in his Rob Roy canoe over the rivers of Europe, "diffusing cheerfulness and distributing Evangelical tracts." I had no room for tracts, and if I had followed the example of my well-intentioned predecessor in canoeing, it would have served the cause of truth or creed but little. The Crackers could not read, and but few of the grown negroes had been taught letters. They did not want books, but tobacco. Men and women hailed me from the banks as I glided along in my canoe, with, "Say, captain, hab you eny 'bacca or snuff for dis chile?" Poor humanity! The Cracker and the freedman fill alike their places according to the light they possess. Do we, who have been taught from our youth sacred things, do more than this? Do we love our neighbor as ourself?

For twenty miles (local authority) I journeyed down the stream, without seeing a human being or a dwelling-place, to Stanley's house and the bridge; from which I urged the canoe thirty-five miles further, passing an old field on a bluff, when darkness settled on the swamps, and a heavy mist rose from the waters and enveloped the forests in its folds. With not a trace of land above water I groped about, running into what appeared to be openings in the submerged land, only to find my canoe tangled in thickets. It was useless to go further, and I prepared to ascend to the forks of a giant tree, with a light rope, to be used for lashing my body into a safe position, when a long, low cry engaged my attention.

"Waugh! ho! ho! ho! peig – peig – pe-ig – pe-ig," came through the still, thick air. It was not an owl, nor a catamount that cried thus; nor was it the bark of a fox. It was the voice of a Cracker calling in his hogs from the forest. This sound was indeed pleasant to my ears, for I knew the upland was near, and that a warm fire awaited my benumbed limbs in the cabin of this unknown man. Pushing the canoe towards the sound, and feeling the submerged border of the swamp with my paddle, I struck the upland where it touched the water, and disembarking, felt my way along a well-trodden path to a little clearing. Here a drove of hogs were crowding around their owner, who was scattering kernels of corn about him as he vociferated, "pe-ig – pe-ig – pe-ig – pig – pig – pig." We stood face to face, yet neither could see the face of the other in the darkness. I told my tale, and asked where I could find a sheltered spot to camp.

"Stranger," slowly replied the Cracker, "my cabin's close at hand. Come home with me. It's a bad night for a man to lay out in; and the niggers would steal your traps if they knew you had anything worth taking. Come with me."

In the tall pines near at hand was a cabin of peeled rails, the chinks between them being stuffed with moss. A roof of cypress shingles kept the rain out. The log chimney, which was plastered with mud, was built outside of the walls and against an end of the rustic-looking structure. The wide-mouthed fireplace sent forth a blaze of light as we entered the poor man's home. I saw in the nicely swept floor, the clean bed-spreads, and the general neatness of the place, the character of Wilson Edge's wife.

"Hog and hominy's our food here in the piny woods," said Mr. Edge, as his wife invited us to the little table; "and we've a few eggs now and then to eat with sweet potatoes, but it's up-hill work to keep the niggers from killing every fowl and animal we have. The carpet-bag politicians promised them every one, for his vote, forty acres of land and a mule. They sed as how the northern government was a-going to give it to um; but the poor devils never got any thanks even for their votes. They had been stuffed with all sorts of notions by the carpet-baggers, and I don't blame um for putting on airs and trying to rule us. It's human natur, that's all. We don't blame the niggers half so much as those who puts it in their heads to do so; but it's hard times we've had, we poor woods folks. They took our children for the cussed war, to fight fur niggers and rich people as owned um.

"We never could find out what all the fuss was about; but when Jeff Davis made a law to exempt every man from the army who owned fifteen niggers, then our blood riz right up, and we sez to our neighbors, 'This ere thing's a-getting to be a rich man's quarrel and a poor man's fight.' After all they dragged off my boy to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and killed him a fighting for what? Why, for rich nigger owners. Our young men hid in the swamps, but they were hunted up and forced into the army. Niggers has been our ruin. Ef a white man takes a case before a nigger justice, he gives the nigger everything, and the white man has to stand one side. Now, would you folks up north like to have a nigger justice who can't read nor count ten figgurs?"

I tried to comfort the poor man, by assuring him that outside of the political enemies of our peace, the masses in the north were honestly inclined towards the south now that slavery was at an end; and that wrong could not long prevail, with the cheerful prospect of a new administration, and the removal of all unconstitutional forces that preyed upon the south.

The two beds in the single room of the cabin were occupied by the family; while I slept upon the floor by the fire, with my blankets for a couch and a roll of homespun for a pillow, which the women called "heading." They often said, "Let me give you some heading for your bed." We waited until eight o'clock the next day for the mists to rise from the swamps. My daily trouble was now upon me. How could I remunerate a southerner for his cost of keeping me, when not, in the true sense of the word, an invited guest to his hospitality?

Wilson Edge sat by the fire, while his wife and little ones were preparing to accompany me to see the paper boat. "Mr. Edge," I stammered, "you have treated me with great kindness, your wife has been put to some inconvenience, as I came in so unexpected a manner, and you will really oblige me if you will accept a little money for all this; though money cannot pay for your hospitality. Grant my wish, and you will send me away with a light heart." The poor Cracker lowered his head and slowly ran his fingers through his coal black hair. For a moment he seemed studying a reply, and then he spoke as though HE represented the whole generous heart of the south.

"Stranger," he slowly articulated, "Stranger, I have known white men to be niggers enough to take a stranger's money for lodgings and vittles, but I am not that man."

We found the canoe as it had been left the night before, and I was soon pulling down the river. The great wilderness was traversed thirty miles to the county town of Conwayborough, where the negroes roared with laughter at the working of the double paddle, as I shot past the landing-place where cotton and naval stores were piled, waiting to be lightered nine miles to Pot Bluff, – so called from the fact of a pot being lost from a vessel near it, – which place is reached by vessels from New York drawing twelve feet of water. Though still a long distance from the ocean, I was beginning to feel its tidal influences. At Pot Bluff, the landing and comfortable home of its owner, Mr. Z. W. Dusenberry, presented a pleasant relief after the monotony of the great pine forests. This enterprising business man made my short stay a very pleasant one.

Wednesday, January 20th, was cold for this latitude, and ice formed in thin sheets in the water-pails. Twenty-two miles below Pot Bluff, Bull Creek enters the Waccamaw from the Peedee River. At the mouth of this connecting watercourse is Tip Top, the first rice plantation of the Waccamaw. The Peedee and its sister stream run an almost parallel course from Bull Creek to Winyah Bay, making their debouchure close to the city of Georgetown. Steam saw-mills and rice plantations take the place of the forests from a few miles below Tip Top to the vicinity of Georgetown.

Mr. M. L. Blakely, of New York, one of the largest shingle manufacturers of the south, occupied as his headquarters the Bates Hill Plantation, on the Peedee. This gentleman had invited me, through the medium of the post-office, to visit him in the rice-growing regions of South Carolina. To reach his home I took the short "cut-off" which Bull Creek offered, and entered upon the strongest of head-currents. The thick, yellow, muddy torrent of the Peedee rushed through Bull Creek with such volume, that I wondered if it left much water on the other side, to give character to the river, as it followed its own channel to Winyah Bay.

One and a half miles of vigorous paddling brought me to a branch of the watercourse, which is much narrower than the main one, and is consequently called Little Bull Creek. This also comes from the Peedee River, and its source is nearer to the Bates Hill plantation than the main Bull Creek. To urge the canoe up this narrow stream three miles and a half to the parent river Peedee, was a most trying ordeal. At times the boat would not move a hundred feet in five minutes, and often, as my strength seemed failing me, I caught the friendly branches of trees, and held on to keep the canoe from being whirled down the current towards the Waccamaw. After long and persistent efforts had exhausted my strength, I was about to seek for a resting-place in the swamp, when a view of the broad Peedee opened before me, and with vigorous strokes of the paddle the canoe slowly approached the mighty current. A moment more and it was within its grasp, and went flying down the turbulent stream at the rate of ten miles an hour.

A loud halloo greeted me from the swamp, where a party of negro shingle-makers were at work. They manned their boat, a long cypress dug-out, and followed me. Their employer, who proved to be the gentleman whose abiding-place I was now rapidly approaching, sat in the stern. We landed together before the old plantation-house, which had been occupied a few years before by members of the wealthy and powerful rice-planting aristocracy of the Peedee, but was now the temporary home of a northern man, who was busily employed in guiding the labors of his four hundred freedmen in the swamps of North and South Carolina.

The paper canoe had now entered the regions of the rice-planter. Along the low banks of the Peedee were diked marshes where, before the civil war, each estate produced from five thousand to forty thousand bushels of rice annually, and the lords of rice were more powerful than those of cotton, though cotton was king. The rich lands here produced as high as fifty-five bushels of rice to the acre, under forced slave labor; now the free blacks cannot wrest from nature more than twenty-five or thirty bushels.

Fine old mansions lined the river's banks, but the families had been so reduced by the ravages of war, that I saw refined ladies, who had been educated in the schools of Edinburgh, Scotland, overseeing the negroes as they worked in the yards of the rice-mills. The undaunted spirit of these southern ladies, as they worked in their homes now so desolate, roused my admiration.

A light, graceful figure, enveloped in an old shawl, and mounted on an old horse, flitted about one plantation like a restless spirit.

"That lady's father," said a gentleman to me, "owned three plantations, worth three millions of dollars, before the war. There is a rice-mill on one of the plantations which cost thirty thousand dollars. She now fights against misfortune, and will not give up. The Confederate war would not have lasted six months if it had not been for our women. They drove thousands of us young men into the fight; and now, having lost all, they go bravely to work, even taking the places of their old servants in their grand old homes. It's hard for them, though, I assure you."

On Tuesday, January 25th, I paddled down the Peedee, stopping at the plantations of Dr. Weston and Colonel Benjamin Allston. The latter gentleman was a son of one of the governors of South Carolina. He kindly gave me a letter of introduction to Commodore Richard Lowndes, who lived near the coast. From the Peedee I passed through a cut in the marshes into the broad Waccamaw, and descended it to Winyah Bay.

Georgetown is located between the mouths of the Peedee and Sampit rivers. Cautiously approaching the city, I landed at Mr. David Risley's steam saw-mills, and that gentleman kindly secreted my boat in a back counting-room, while I went up town to visit the post-office. By some, to me, unaccountable means, the people had heard of the arrival of the paper boat, and three elaborately dressed negro women accosted me with, "Please show wees tree ladies de little paper boat."

Before I had reached my destination, the post-office, a body of men met me, on their way to the steam-mill. The crowd forced me back to the canoe, and asked so many questions that I was sorely taxed to find answers for these gentlemen. There were three editors in the crowd: two were white men, one a negro. The young men, who claimed the position of representatives of the spirit of the place and of the times, published "The Comet," while the negro, as though influenced by a spirit of sarcasm, conducted "The Planet." The third newspaper represented at the canoe reception was the "Georgetown Times," which courteously noticed the little boat that had come so far. The "Planet" prudently kept in the dark, and said nothing, but "The Comet," representing the culture of the young men of the city, published the following notice of my arrival:

"Tom Collins has at last arrived in his wonderful paper boat. He has it hitched to Mr. Risley's new saw-mill, where every one can have a view. 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. The canal ended at North Santee Bay.

While I was preparing to ascend the river a tempest arose, which kept me a weary prisoner among the reeds of the rice marsh. The hollow reeds made poor fuel for cooking, and when the dark, stormy night shut down upon me, the damp soil grew damper as the tide arose, until it threatened to overflow the land. For hours I lay in my narrow canoe waiting for the tidal flood to do its worst, but it receded, and left me without any means of building a fire, as the reeds were wet by the storm. The next afternoon, being tired of this sort of prison-life, and cramped for lack of exercise, I launched the canoe into the rough water, and crossing to Crow Island found a lee under its shores, which permitted me to ascend the river to the mouth of Atchison Creek, through which I passed, two miles, to the South Santee River.

All these rivers are bordered by rice plantations, many of them having been abandoned to the care of the freedmen. I saw no white men upon them. Buildings and dikes are falling into ruins, and the river freshets frequently inundate the land. Many of the owners of these once valuable estates are too much reduced in wealth to attempt their proper cultivation. It is in any case difficult to get the freedmen to work through an entire season, even when well paid for their services, and they flock to the towns whenever opportunity permits.

The North and South Santee rivers empty into the Atlantic, but their entrances are so shallow that Georgetown Entrance is the inlet through which most of the produce of the country – pitch, tar, turpentine, rice, and lumber – finds exit to the sea. As I left the canal, which, with the creek, makes a complete thoroughfare for lighters and small coasters from one Santee River to the other, a renewal of the tempest made me seek shelter in an old cabin in a negro settlement, each house of which was built upon piles driven into the marshes. The old negro overseer of the plantation hinted to me that his "hands were berry spicious of ebbry stranger," and advised me to row to some other locality. I told him I was from the north, and would not hurt even one of the fleas which in multitudes infested his negroes' quarters; but the old fellow shook his head, and would not be responsible for me if I staid there all night. A tall darkey, who had listened to the conversation, broke in with, "Now, uncle, ye knows dat if dis gemmum is from de norf he is one of wees, and ye must du fur him jis dis time." But "Uncle Overseer" kept repeating, "Some niggers here is mity spicious. Du not no who white man is anyhow." "Well, uncle," replied the tall black, "ef dis man is a Yankee-mans, Ise will see him froo."

Then he questioned me, while the fleas, having telegraphed to each other that a stranger had arrived, made sad havoc of me and my patience.

"My name's Jacob Gilleu; what's yourn?" I gave it. "Whar's your home?" came next. "I am a citizen of the United States," I replied. "De 'Nited States – whar's dat? neber hurd him afore," said Jacob Gilleu. Having informed him it was the land which General Grant governed, he exclaimed: "O, you's a Grant man; all rite den; you is one of wees – all de same as wees. Den look a-here, boss. I send you to one good place on Alligator Creek, whar Seba Gillings libs. He black man, but he treat you jes like white man."