Voyage of the Paper Canoe
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While navigating Cooper River, as the heavy mists rolled in clouds over the quiet waters, a sailboat, rowed by negroes, emerged from the gloom and as suddenly disappeared. I shouted after them: "Please tell me the name of the next creek." A hoarse voice came back to me from the cloud: "Pull and be d – d. " Then all was still as night again. To solve this seemingly uncourteous reply, so unusual in the south, I consulted the manuscript charts which the Charleston pilots had kindly drawn for my use, and found that the negroes had spoken geographically as well as truthfully, for Pine Island Creek is known to the watermen as "Pull and be d – d Creek," on account of its tortuous character, and chiefly because, as the tides head in it, if a boat enters it from one river with a favorable tide, it has a strong head current on the other side of the middle ground to oppose it. Thus pulling at the oars at some parts of the creek becomes hard work for the boatmen; hence this name, which, though profane, may be considered geographical.
After leaving the Cooper River, the watercourses to Savannah were discolored by red or yellow mud. From Pine Island I descended New River two miles and a half to Wall's Cut, which is only a quarter of a mile in length, and through which I entered Wright's River, following it a couple of miles to the broad, yellow, turbulent current of the Savannah.
My thoughts now naturally turned to the early days of steamboat enterprise, when this river, as well as the Hudson, was conspicuous; for though the steamer Savannah was not the first steam-propelled vessel which cut the waves of the Atlantic, she was the first steamer that ever crossed it. Let us examine historical data. Colonel John Stevens, of New York, built the steamboat Phœnix about the year 1808, and was prevented from using it upon the Hudson River by the Fulton and Livingston monopoly charter.
The Phœnix made an ocean voyage to the Delaware River. The first English venture was that of the steamer Caledonia, which made a passage to Holland in 1817. The London Times of May 11, 1819, printed in its issue of that date the following item:
Great Experiment. – A new vessel of three hundred tons has been built at New York for the express purpose of carrying passengers across the Atlantic. She is to come to Liverpool direct."
This ship-rigged steamer was the "Savannah," and the bold projector of this experiment of sending a steamboat across the Atlantic was Daniel Dodd. The Savannah was built in New York, by Francis Ficket, for Mr. Dodd. Stephen Vail, of Morristown, New Jersey, built her engines, and on the 22d of August, 1818, she was launched, gliding gracefully into the element which was to bear her to foreign lands, there to be crowned with the laurels of success. On May 25th this purely American-built vessel left Savannah, and glided out from this waste of marshes, under the command of Captain Moses Rogers, with Stephen Rogers as navigator. The port of New London, Conn., had furnished these able seamen.
The steamer reached Liverpool June 20th, the passage having occupied twenty-six days, upon eighteen of which she had used her paddles. A son of Mr. Dodd once told me of the sensation produced by the arrival of a smoking vessel on the coast of Ireland, and how Lieutenant John Bowie, of the king's cutter Kite, sent a boat-load of sailors to board the Savannah to assist her crew to extinguish the fires of what his Majesty's officers supposed to be a burning ship.
The Savannah, after visiting Liverpool, continued her voyage on July 23d, and reached St. Petersburg in safety. Leaving the latter port on October 10th, this adventurous craft completed the round voyage upon her arrival at Savannah, November 30th.
I pulled up the Savannah until within five miles of the city, and then left the river on its south side, where old rice-plantations are first met, and entered St. Augustine Creek, which is the steamboat thoroughfare of the inland route to Florida. Just outside the city of Savannah, near its beautiful cemetery, where tall trees with their graceful drapery of Spanish moss screen from wind and sun the quiet resting-places of the dead, my canoe was landed, and stored in a building of the German Greenwich Shooting Park, where Mr. John Hellwig, in a most hospitable manner, cared for it and its owner.
While awaiting the arrival of letters at the Savannah post-office, many of the ladies of that beautiful city came out to see the paper canoe. They seemed to have the mistaken idea that my little craft had come from the distant Dominion of Canada over the Atlantic Ocean. They also looked upon the voyage of the paper canoe as a very sentimental thing, while the canoeist had found it an intensely practical affair, though occasionally relieved by incidents of romantic or amusing character. As the ladies clustered round the boat while it rested upon the centre-table of Mr. Hellwig's parlor, they questioned me freely.
"Tell us," they said, "what were your thoughts while you rowed upon the broad ocean in the lonely hours of night?"
Though unwilling to break their pleasing illusions, I was obliged to inform them that a sensible canoeist is usually enjoying his needed rest in some camp, or sleeping in some sheltered place, – under a roof if possible, – after it is too dark to travel in safety; and as to ocean travelling, the canoe had only once entered upon the Atlantic Ocean, and then through a mistake.
"But what subjects occupy your thoughts as you row, and row, and row all day by yourself, in this little ship?" a motherly lady inquired.
"To tell you honestly, ladies, I must say that when I am in shallow watercourses, with the tides usually ebbing at the wrong time for my convenience, I am so full of anxiety about getting wrecked on the reefs of sharp coon-oysters, that I am wishing myself in deep water; and when my route forces me into the deep water of sounds, and the surface becomes tossed into wild disorder by strong currents and stronger winds, and the porpoises pay me their little attentions, chasing the canoe, flapping their tails, and showing their sportive dispositions, I think longingly of those same shoal creeks, and wish I was once more in their shallow waters."
"We ladies have prayed for your safety," said a kind-looking German lady, "and we will pray that your voyage may have a happy and successful end."
When the ladies left, two Irish laborers, dressed in sombre black, with high hats worn with the air of dignity, examined the boat. There was an absence of the sparkle of fun usually seen in the Irish face, for this was a serious occasion. They did not see any romance or sentiment in the voyage, but took a broad, geographical view of the matter. They stood silently gazing at the canoe with the same air of solemnity they would have given a corpse. Then one addressed the other, as though the owner of the craft was entirely out of the hearing of their conversation.
Said No. 1, "And what did I tell ye, Pater?" "And so ye did," replied No. 2. "And didn't I say so?" continued No. 1. "Of course ye did; and wasn't me of the same mind, to be sure?" responded No. 2. "Yes, I told ye as how it is the men of these times is greater than the men of ould times. There was the great Coolumbus, who came over in three ships to see Americky. What did he know about paper boats? Nothing at all, at all. He cum over in big ships, while this young feller has cum all the way from Canada. I tell ye the men of ould times was not up to the men of these times. Thin there's Captain Boyton, who don't use any boat or ship at all, at all, but goes a-swimming in rubber clothes to keep him dry all over the Atlantic Oshin. Jis' look, man, how he landed on the shores of ould Ireland not long since. Now what's Coolumbus, or any other man of the past ages, to him? Coolumbus could not hold a candle to Boyton! No, I tell ye agen that the men of this age is greater than the men of the past ages." "And," broke in No. 2, "there's a Britisher who's gone to the River Niles in a canoe." "The River Niles!" hotly exclaimed No. 1; "don't waste your breath on that thing. It's no new thing at all, at all. It was diskivered a long time ago, and nobody cares a fig for it now." "Yet," responded No. 2, "some of those old-times people were very enterprising. There was that great traveller Robinson Crusoe: ye must confess he was a great man for his time." "The same who wint to the South Sea Islands and settled there?" asked the first biographer. "The very same man," replied No. 2, with animation.
This instructive conversation was here interrupted by a party of ladies and gentlemen, who in turn gave their views of canoe and canoeist.
CHAPTER XIII
FROM THE SAVANNAH RIVER TO FLORIDA
ROUTE TO THE SEA ISLANDS OF GEORGIA. – STORM-BOUND ON GREEN ISLAND. – OSSABAW ISLAND. – ST. CATHERINE'S SOUND. – SAPELO ISLAND. – THE MUD OF MUD RIVER. – NIGHT IN A NEGRO CABIN. – "DE SHOUTINGS" ON DOBOY ISLAND. – BROUGHTON ISLAND. – ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS. – INTERVIEW WITH AN ALLIGATOR. – A NIGHT IN JOINTER HAMMOCK. – CUMBERLAND ISLAND AND ST. MARY'S RIVER. – FAREWELL TO THE SEA.
ON February 24th, the voyage was again resumed. My route lay through the coast islands of Georgia, as far south as the state boundary, Cumberland Sound, and the St. Mary's River. This part of the coast is very interesting, and is beautifully delineated on the Coast Charts No. 56-57 of the United States Coast Survey, which were published the year after my voyage ended.
Steamers run from Savannah through these interesting interior water-ways to the ports of the St. John's River, Florida, and by taking this route the traveller can escape a most uninteresting railroad journey from Savannah to Jacksonville, where sandy soils and pine forests present an uninviting prospect to the eye. A little dredging, in a few places along the steamboat route, should be done at national cost, to make this a more convenient and expeditious tidal route for vessels.
Leaving Greenwich, Bonaventure, and Thunderbolt behind me on the upland, the canoe entered the great marshy district of the coast along the Wilmington and Skiddaway rivers to Skiddaway Narrows, which is a contracted, crooked watercourse connecting the Skiddaway with the Burnside River. The low lands were made picturesque by hammocks, some of which were cultivated.
In leaving the Burnside for the broad Vernon River, as the canoe approached the sea, one of the sudden tempests which frequently vex these coast-waters arose, and drove me to a hammock in the marshes of Green Island, on the left bank and opposite the mouth of the Little Ogeechee River. Green Island has been well cultivated in the past, but is now only the summer home of Mr. Styles, its owner. Two or three families of negroes inhabited the cabins and looked after the property of the absent proprietor.
I waded to my knees in the mud before the canoe could be landed, and, as it stormed all night, I slept on the floor of the humble cot of the negro Echard Holmes, having first treated the household to crackers and coffee. The negroes gathered from other points to examine the canoe, and, hearing that I was from the north, one grizzly old darky begged me to "carry" his complaints to Washington.
"De goberment," he said, "has been berry good to wees black folks. It gib us our freedom, – all berry well; but dar is an noder ting wees wants; dat is, wees wants General Grant to make tings stashionary. De storekeeper gibs a poor nigger only one dollar fur bushel corn, sometimes not so much. Den he makes poor nigger gib him tree dollars fur bag hominy, sometimes more'n dat. Wees wants de goberment to make tings stashionary. Make de storekeeper gib black man one dollar and quarter fur de bushel of corn, and make him sell de poor nigger de bag hominy fur much less dan tree dollars. Make all tings stashionary. Den dar's one ting more. Tell de goberment to do fur poor darky 'nodder ting, – make de ole massa say to me, 'You's been good slave in ole times, —berry good slave; now I gib you one, two, tree, five acres of land for yoursef.' Den ole nigger be happy, and massa be happy too; den bof of um bees happy. Hab you a leetle bacca fur dis ole man?"
From the Styles mansion it was but three miles to Ossabaw Sound. Little Don Island and Raccoon Key are in the mouth of the Vernon. Between the two flat islands is a deep passage through which the tides rush with great force; it is called Hell Gate. On the south side of Raccoon Key the Great Ogeechee River pours its strong volume of water into Ossabaw Sound.
I entered the Great Ogeechee through the Don Island passage, and saw sturgeon-fishermen at work with their nets along the shores of Ossabaw, one of the sea islands. Ossabaw Island lies between Ossabaw and St. Catherine's sounds, and is eight miles long and six miles wide. The side towards the sea is firm upland, diversified with glades, while the western portion is principally marshes cut up by numerous creeks. All the sea islands produce the long staple cotton known as sea-island cotton, and before the war a very valuable variety. A few negroes occupy the places abandoned by the proprietor, and eke out a scanty livelihood.
There are many deer in the forests of Ossabaw Island. One of its late proprietors informed me that there must be at least ten thousand wild hogs there, as they have been multiplying for many years, and but few were shot by the negroes. The domestic hog becomes a very shy animal if left to himself for two or three years. The hunter may search for him without a dog almost in vain, though the woods may contain large numbers of these creatures.
The weather was now delightful, and had I possessed a light tent I would not have sought shelter at night in a human habitation anywhere along the route. The malaria which arises from fresh-water sinks in many of the sea islands during the summer months, did not now make camping-out dangerous to the health. Crossing the Great Ogeechee above Middle Marsh Island, I followed the river to the creek called Florida Passage, through which I reached Bear River, with its wide and long reaches, and descended it to St. Catherine's Sound.
Now the sea opened to full view as the canoe crossed the tidal ocean gate-way two miles to North Newport River. When four miles up the Newport I entered Johnson's Creek, which flows from North to South Newport rivers. By means of the creek and the South Newport River, my little craft was navigated down to the southern end of St. Catherine's Island to the sound of the same name, and here another inlet was crossed at sunset, and High Point of Sapelo Island was reached.
From among the green trees of the high bluff a mansion, which exhibited the taste of its builder, rose imposingly. This was, however, but one of the many edifices that are tombs of buried hopes. The proprietor, a northern gentleman, after the war purchased one-third of Sapelo Island for fifty-five thousand dollars in gold. He attempted, as many other enterprising northerners had done, to give the late slave a chance to prove his worth as a freedman to the world.
"Pay the negro wages; treat him as you would treat a white man, and he will reward your confidence with industry and gratitude." So thought and so acted the large-hearted northern colonel. He built a large mansion, engaged his freedmen, paid them for their work, and treated them like men. The result was ruin, and simply because he had not paused to consider that the negro had not been born a freedman, and that the demoralization of slavery was still upon him. Beside which facts we must also place certain ethnological and moral principles which exist in the pure negro type, and which are entirely overlooked by those philanthropic persons who have rarely, if ever, seen a full-blooded negro, but affect to understand him through his half-white brother, the mulatto.
Mud River opened its wide mouth before me as I left the inlet, but the tide was very low, and Mud River is a sticking-point in the passage of the Florida steamers. It became so dark that I was obliged to get near the shore to make a landing. My attempt was made opposite a negro's house which was on a bluff, but the water had receded into the very narrow channel of Mud River, and I was soon stuck fast on a flat. Getting overboard, I sank to my knees in the soft mud. I called for help, and was answered by a tall darky, who, with a double-barrelled gun, left his house and stood in a threatening manner on the shore. I appealed for help, and said I wished to go ashore. "Den cum de best way you can," he answered in a surly manner. "What duz you want 'bout here, any way? What duz you want on Choc'late Plantation, anyhow?"
I explained to this ugly black that I was a northern man, travelling to see the country, and wished to camp near his house for protection, and promised, if he would aid me to land, that I would convince him of my honest purpose by showing him the contents of my canoe, and would prove to him that I was no enemy to the colored man. I told him of the maps, the letters, and the blankets which were in the little canoe now so fast in the mud, and what a loss it would be if some marauder, passing on the next high tide, should steal my boat.
The fellow slowly lowered his gun, which had been held in a threatening position, and said:
"Nobody knows his friends in dese times. I'se had a boat stealed by some white man, and spose you was cumin to steal sumting else. Dese folks on de riber can't be trussed. Dey steals ebryting. Heaps o' bad white men 'bout nowadays sens de war. Steals a nigger's chickens, boats, and ebryting dey lays hands on. Up at de big house on High Pint (norfen gemmin built him, and den got gusted wid cotton-planting and went home) de white folks goes and steals all de cheers and beds, and ebryting out ob de house. Sens de war all rascals."
It was a wearisome and dangerous job for me to navigate the canoe over the soft, slippery mud to the firm shore, as there were unfathomed places in the flats which might ingulf or entomb me at any step; but the task was completed, and I stood face to face with the now half tranquillized negro. Before removing the mud that hung upon me to the waist in heavy clods, I showed the darky my chart-case, and explained the object of my mission. He was very intelligent, and, after asking a few questions, said to his son:
"Take dis gun to de house;" and then turning to me, continued: "Dis is de sort ob man I'se am. I'se knows how to treat a friend like a white man, and I'se can fight wid my knife or my fist or my gun anybody who 'poses on me. Now I'se knows you is a gemmin I'se won't treat you like a nigger. Gib you best I'se got. Cum to de house."
When inside of the house of this resolute black, every attention was paid to my comfort. The cargo of the paper canoe was piled up in one corner of the room. The wife and children sat before the bright fire and listened to the story of my cruise. I doctored the sick pickaninny of my host, and made the family a pot of strong coffee. This negro could read, but he asked me to address a label he wished to attach to a bag of Sea-Island cotton of one hundred and sixty pounds' weight, which he had raised, and was to ship by the steamboat Lizzie Baker to a mercantile house in Savannah.
As I rested upon my blankets, which were spread upon the floor of the only comfortable room in the house, at intervals during the night the large form of the black stole softly in and bent over me to see if I were well covered up, and he as noiselessly piled live-oak sticks upon the dying embers to dry up the dampness which rose from the river.
He brought me a basin of cold water in the morning, and not possessing a towel clean enough for a white man, he insisted that I should use his wife's newly starched calico apron to wipe my face and hands upon. When I offered him money for the night's accommodation and the excellent oyster breakfast that his wife prepared for me, he said: "You may gib my wife whateber pleases you for her cooking, but nuffin for de food or de lodgings. I'se no nigger, ef I is a cullud man."
It was now Saturday, and as I rowed through the marsh thoroughfare called New Tea Kettle Creek, which connects Mud River with Doboy Sound near the southern end of Sapelo Island, I calculated the chances of finding a resting-place for Sunday. If I went up to the mainland through North and Darien rivers to the town of Darien, my past experience taught me that instead of enjoying rest I would become a forced exhibiter of the paper canoe to crowds of people. To avoid this, I determined to pass the day in the first hammock that would afford shelter and fire-wood; but as the canoe entered Doboy Sound, which, with its inlet, separates Sapelo from the almost treeless Wolf Island, the wind rose with such violence that I was driven to take refuge upon Doboy Island, a small marshy territory, the few firm acres of which were occupied by the settlement and steam saw-mill of Messrs. Hiltons, Foster & Gibson, a northern lumber firm.
Foreign and American vessels were anchored under the lee of protecting marshes, awaiting their cargoes of sawed deals and hewn timber; while rafts of logs, which had been borne upon the currents of the Altamaha and other streams from the far interior regions of pine forests, were collected here and manufactured into lumber.
One of the proprietors, a northern gentleman, occupied with his family a very comfortable cottage near the store and steam saw-mill. As the Doboy people had learned of the approach of the paper canoe from southern newspapers, the little craft was identified as soon as it touched the low shores of the island.
I could not find any kind of hotel or lodging-place in this settlement of Yankees, Canadians, and negroes, and was about to leave it in search of some lone hammock, when a mechanic kindly offered me the floor of an unfinished room in an unfinished house, in which I passed my Sunday trying to rest, and obtaining my meals at a restaurant kept by a negro.
A member of the Spaulding family, the owners of a part of Sapelo Island, called upon me, and seeing me in such inhospitable quarters, with fleas in hundreds invading my blankets, urged me to return with him to his island domain, where he might have an opportunity to make me comfortable. The kind gentleman little knew how hardened I had become to such annoyances as hard floors and the active flea. Such inconveniences had been robbed of their discomforts by the kind voices of welcome which, with few exceptions, came from every southern gentleman whose territory had been invaded by the paper canoe.
There was but one place of worship on the island, and that was under the charge of the negroes. Accepting the invitation of a nephew of the resident New England proprietor of Doboy Island to attend "de shoutings," we set out on Sunday evening for the temporary place of negro worship. A negro girl, decked with ribbons, called across the street to a young colored delinquent: "You no goes to de shoutings, Sam! Why fur? You neber hears me shout, honey, and dey do say I shouts so pretty. Cum 'long wid me now."
A few blacks had collected in the small shanty, and the preacher, an old freed man, was about to read a hymn as we entered. At first the singing was low and monotonous, but it gradually swelled to a high pitch as the negroes became excited. Praying followed the singing. Then the black preacher set aside "de shouting" part of the service for what he considered more important interests, and discoursed upon things spiritual and temporal in this wise:
"Now I'se got someting to tell all of yese berry 'portant." Here two young blacks got up to leave the room, but were rudely stopped by a negro putting his back against the door. "No, no," chuckled the preacher, "yese don't git off dat a-way. I'se prepared fur de ockasun. Nobody gits out ob dis room till I'se had my say. Jes you set down dar. Now I'se goin' to do one ting, and it's dis: I'se goin' to spread de Gospel all ober dis yere island of Doboy. Now's de time; talked long 'nuf, too long, 'bout buildin' de church. Whar's yere pride? whar is it? Got none! Look at dis room for a church! Look at dis pulpit – one flour-barrel wid one candle stickin' out ob a bottle! Dat's yere pulpit. Got no pride! Shamed o' yeresefs! Here white men comes way from New York to hear de Gospel in dis yere room wid flour-barrel fur pulpit, and empty bottle fur candlestick. No more talk now. All go to work. De mill people will gib us lumber fur de new church; odders mus' gib money. Tell ebbry cullud pusson on de island to cum on Tuesday and carry lumber, and gib ebbry one what he can, – one dollar apiece, or ten cents if got no more. De white gemmins we knows whar to find when we wants dar money, but de cullud ones is berry slippery when de hat am passed round."