University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
SCENE OF ACTION.

Suppose the day to be a fine one — calm, placid, and without
a cloud — even such a day as frequently comes to cheer us in
the benign and bud-compelling month of April; — suppose the
seas to be smooth; at rest, and slumbering without emotion; with
a fair bosom gently heaving, and sending up only happy murmurs,
like an infant's after a late passion of tears; suppose the hour
to be a little after the turn of noon, when, in April, the sun, only
gently soliciting, forbears all ardency; sweetly smiles and softly
embraces; and, though loving enough for comfort, is not so oppressive
in his attachments as to prompt the prayer for an iceberg
upon which to couch ourselves for his future communion; supposing
all these supposes, dear reader, then the voyager, running
close in for the land — whose fortune it is to traverse that portion
of the Atlantic which breaks along the shores of Georgia and the
Carolinas — beholds a scene of beauty in repose, such as will be
very apt to make him forgetful of all the dangers he has passed!

We shall say nothing of the same region, defaced by strifes of

storm and billow, and blackened by the deluging vans of the
equinox.
Enough for us that the Present holds for us delicious compensation;
that the moment is our own, exclusively for beauty; —
that the charm of the prospect before us is beyond question; at
once prompting the desire to describe, yet baffling all powers of
description.

Yet why describe? — since, as Byron deplores —

And yet, the scene is so peculiar, so individual, so utterly unlike
that kind of scenery from which the traveller usually extorts his
inspiration, that something need be said to make us understand
the sources of beauty in a region which so completely lacks in
saliency, in elevated outlines, in grand mountainous masses, rugged
defiles, and headlong cataracts. Here are none of these.
All that you behold — sea, and forest-waste, and shore — all lies
level before you. As you see, the very waters do not heave
themselves into giant forms, wear no angry crests, leap up with
no threatening voices, howl forth nothing of their secret rages!
We reject, at this moment, all the usual adjuncts which make
ocean awful and sublime; those only excepted which harbor in
its magnitude, its solemn sterility of waste, its deep mysterious
murmurs, that speak to us ever of eternity, even when they speak
in the lowest and most musical of their tones.

In what, then, consists the beauty of the scene? Let us explain,
and catalogue, at least, where we may not be able to describe.
You are aware, dear readers, that you may set forth, on
a periagua, or, if you like it better, a sloop, a schooner, or a trim
little steamer; and, leaving the shores of Virginia, make your
way along those of the Carolinas and Georgia, to Florida, almost
entirely landlocked the whole voyage; all along these shores, the
billows of the sea, meeting with the descending rivers, have
thrown up barrier islands and islets, that fence in the main from
its own invasions. Here are guardian terraces of green, covered

with dense forests, that rise like marshalled legions along
the very margins of the deep. Here are naked sand-dunes,
closing avenues between, upon which you may easily fancy that
the fairies gambol in the moonlight. Some are sprinkled with
our southern palm-tree, the palmetto; others completely covered
with this modest growth; others again with oak, and pine, and
cypress; and there are still others, whose deep, dense, capacious
forests harbor the red deer in abundance; and, skirting many
of these islets, are others in process of formation; long stripes of
marsh, whose perpetual green, contrasting, yet assimilating beautifully
with the glare of sunlight on the sea, so relieves the eye
with a sense of sweetness, beauty, freshness, and repose, that you
never ask yourself the idle question, of what profit this marsh —
its green that bears neither fruits nor flowers — its plumage
that brings no grateful odor —its growth without market value?
Enough, you say or feel, that, in the regions where you find it,
it is a beauty and delight.

And so, you navigate your bark through avenues of sea between
these islets and the main; through winding channels where
the seas lie subdued, their crests under curb, and resting in beds
of green and solitude, only tenanted by simple herds of deer, or
by wandering pilgrims of the crane, the curlew, the pelican and
duck.

Beyond, the great ocean plain stretches wide and far; and even
when it rolls in storm, and its billows break in fury along the
islet shores, not half a mile away — all here is safe! On either
hand, the sheltering nook invites your prow; quiet harbors open
for your reception, and offer security. Here, the creek that
creeps like a shining serpent through banks of green; here, the
bay that has been scooped out in a half circle, as if purposely
to persuade you to harborage — are both present, affording refuge;
the great oaks grow close down by the ocean's side, and
hang over with such massive shadows, that you see the bath and
the boudoir together. You have but to plunge in, and no Naiad
takes offence; and, lifting yourself to the shores by the help of
that great branch that stretches above the water, there you may
resume your fig-leaves with impunity, assured that no prudish
eyes have been shocked by your eccentric exhibitions of a nude
Apollo!

There is a wondrous charm in this exquisite blending of land
and water scape. It appeals very sweetly to the sympathies, and
does not the less excite the imagination because lacking in irregular
forms and stupendous elevations. Nay, we are inclined to
think that it touches more sweetly the simply human sensibilities.
It does not overawe. It solicits, it soothes, beguiles; wins
upon us the more we see; fascinates the more we entertain; and
more fully compensates than the study of the bald, the wild, the
abrupt and stern, which constitute so largely the elements in that
scenery upon which we expend most of our superlatives. Glide
through these mysterious avenues of islet, and marsh, and ocean,
at early morning, or at evening, when the summer sun is about to
subdue himself in the western waters; or at midnight, when the
moon wins her slow way, with wan, sweet smile, hallowing the
hour; and the charm is complete. It is then that the elements all
seem to harmonize for beauty. The plain of ocean is spread out,
far as the eye can range, circumscribed only by the blue walls of
Heaven, and watched by starry eyes, its little billows breaking
with loving murmur upon the islet shores — these, silvery light, as
swept for fairy footsteps, or, glowing in green, as if roofed for
loving hearts; trees, flowers, fragrance, smiling waters, and delicious
breezes, that have hurried from the rugged shores of the
Cuban, or the gradual slopes of Texas; or farther yet, from still
more beautiful gardens of the South, where Death himself never
comes but wrapped in fragrance and loveliness:—look where you
will, or as you will, and they unite for your conquest; and you
grow meek, yet hopeful; excited, yet satisfied; forgetful of common
cares; lifted above ordinary emotions; and, if your heart be
still a young one, easily persuaded to believe that the world is as
full of bliss as of beauty, and that Love may readily find a covert,
in thousands of sweet places of refuge, which God's blessing shall
convert into happiest homes. Go through these sweet, silent,
mysterious avenues of sea and islet, green plain, and sheltering
thicket, under the prescribed conditions, at early morning or
toward the sunset, or the midnight hour, and the holy sweetness
of the scene will sink into your very soul, and soften it to love
and blessing, even as the dews of heaven steal, in the night-time,
to the bosom of the thirsting plant, and animate it to new developments
of fruitfulness and beauty.

And the scenery of the main partakes of the same character,
with but the difference of foliage. It spreads upward into the
interior, for near a hundred miles, a vast plain, with few inequalities
of surface, but wondrously wooded. If, on the one hand, the
islets, marshes, and savannahs, make an empire of sweetness and
beauty; not less winning are the evergreen varieties that checker
the face of the country on the other. Here are tracts of the noble
live oak, of the gigantic pine, of the ghostly cypress; groves of
each that occupy their several provinces, indicating as many varieties
of soil. Amid these are the crowned laurel, stately as a
forest monarch, the bay, the beech, the poplar, and the mulberry,
not to speak of thousands besides, distinguished either from their
use or beauty; and in the shade of these the dogwood flaunts in
virgin white; and the lascivious jessamine wantons over their tops
in sensuous twines, filling the air with fragrance; and the grape
hangs aloft her purple clusters, which she trains over branches
not her own, making the oak and the hickory sustain those fruits
which they never bear!

And so, in brief transition, you pass from mighty colonnades of
open woods to dense thickets which the black bear may scarcely
penetrate. At the time of which we propose to write, he is one
of the denizens of these regions; here, too, the panther still lurks,
watching the sheepfold or the deer! Here the beaver builds his
formidable dams in the solitude of the swamp, and the wolf and
the fox find their habitations safe. The streams are full of fish,
the forests of prey, the whole region a wild empire in which the
redman still winds his way, hardly conscious of his white superior,
though he already begins to feel the cruel moral presence, in the
instinctive apprehensions of his progress. And birds, in vast varieties,
and reptiles of the ground, “startlingly beautiful,” are tenants
still of these virgin solitudes. The great sea-eagle, the falcon,
the vulture; these brood in the mighty tree-tops, and soar as
masters of the air; the wild goose and duck lead their young
along the sedgy basins; the cormorant and the gull scream across
the waters from the marshy islets; and are answered, with cooing
murmurs, from myriads of doves that brood at noon in the deep
covert of bristly pines. The mock-bird, with his various melodies,
a feathered satirist, who can, however, forget his sarcasm in his
passion; the red-bird and the nonpareil, with softer and simpler

notes, which may be merry as well as tender, but are never scornful;
the humming-bird, that rare sucker of sweets — himself a
flower of the air, — pioneer of the fairies — that finds out the best
flowers ere they come, and rifles them in advance; and — but
enough. Very beautiful, dear friends, to the eye that can see,
the susceptible heart, and the thoughtful, meditative mind, is the
beautiful but peculiar province to which we now invite your
footsteps.

But, as we can not behold all this various world at once, let us
persuade you to one fair locality, which you will find to contain,
in little, all that we have shown you in sweeping generalities.

You will suppose yourselves upon a well-wooded headland,
crowned with live oaks, which looks out upon a quiet bay, at
nearly equal distances between the waters of the Edisto and the
Ashley, in the province of South Carolina. The islets spread
between you and the sea, even as we have described them.
There are winding ways through which you may stretch your
sail, without impediment, into the great Atlantic. There are
lovely isles upon which you may pitch your tents, and take your
prey, while the great billows roll in at your very feet, and the
great green tree shelters you, all the while, from the sharp arrows
of the sun. You look directly down upon what, at the first glance,
would seem a lake: the lands appear to enclose it on every hand;
but there is a difference, you see, in the shade of yonder trees,
from those on the islet just before us, which is due to the fact that
an arm of the sea is thrust between; and here, on the other hand,
there are similar differences which denote a similar cause. But
our lake, or bay, is none the less sheltered or secure, because it
maintains such close connection with the mighty deeps. Faintly
afar, you may note, on the south and west, that there are still
other islets, keeping up a linked line with that which spreads in
front, and helping to form that unbroken chain, which, as I have
told you, spreads along the coast from the capes of Virginia to
those of the Floridian. The territory of the Floridian is under
its old Spanish master still; an ugly neighbor of our amiable
English, who tenant, in feeble colonies, these sylvan realms upon
the verge of which we stand. The period, I may mention here,
is the year of Grace (Grace be with us!) one thousand, six hundred
and eighty-four. Our English colonies of Carolina are less

than thirty years old, and their growth has been a slow one. The
country is still, in great degree, a solitude!

The day — an April day — is one of those which good old
Herbert so happily describes, by its moral aspect, as

In truth, it is very sweet and beautiful, repose its prevailing feature
— repose upon land and sea; a smiling Peace, sitting in sunshine
in the heavens; a healthy, life-giving breeze gushing up from
the ocean, in the southwest, and making all the trees along the
shore nod welcome and satisfaction to the river; and new blossoms
everywhere upon the land; all significant of that virgin birth
which the maternal summer is about to receive from a prolific
spring, which God has hallowed for the uses of Humanity.

We muse as we look, and say, with the poet —

And, as yet, we may venture to say that the spirit of man is
hardly so corrupt here — hardly so incongenial with earth's vegetable
offspring — as greatly to shock by the contrast. Man —
the white man at all events — is hardly here in sufficient numbers,
massed and in perpetual conflict, to be wholly insensible to the
modest moral which is taught by nature. No doubt we shall have
enough of him in time. No doubt we shall be forced to behold
him in all his most dark and damning colors, such as shadow the
fairest aspects of his superior civilization. But he is not yet here
in sufficient force or security to become insolent in his vice or
passion.

“But the red man,” say you. “He is here.” Ay, there are
his scattered tribes — they are everywhere; but feeble in all their
numbers. He is a savage, true; but savage, let me tell you —
and the distinction is an important one, arguing ignorance, not
will — savage rather in his simplicity than in his corruptions.
His brutality is rather that of barbarism than vice. He wanders
through these woods at seasons; here fishing to-day — to-morrow,
gone, leaving no trace; gone in pursuit of herds which he has
probably routed from old pasturages along these very waters.
For a hundred miles above, there rove the tribes of the Stono and
the Isundiga, the Edisto and the Seewee, the Kiawah, and the

Ashepoo, all tributaries of the great nation of the Yemassee. You
will wander for weeks, yet meet not a man of them; yet, in the
twinkling of an eye, when you least fancy them, when you dream
yourself in possession of an unbroken solitude, they will spring up
beside the path, and challenge your attention by a guttural, which
may seem to you a welcome; or by a cri de guerre, which shall
certainly appear to you the whoop of death!

But, at this moment, the solitude seems intact. There are no
red men here. The very silence — so deep is the solitude —
seems to have a sound; and, brooding long on these headlands
without a companion, you will surely hear some voice speaking to
all your senses — perhaps many voices; especially if you do not
use your own. Your ears, that hunger naturally for human
sounds, will finally make them for themselves. Nay, you will
shout aloud, in your desperation, if only in search of echoes.

And, as if the better to satisfy us of the wondrous means of
shelter and security in this world of thicket and seclusion — adding
to the natural picturesque that of the moral — even as we
fancy this realm of solitude to be unbroken, there is a sound!
There are strokes of the paddle; there are human voices. A
canoe shoots out from the thickets to the east. It emerges from
a creek, which opens so modestly upon the bay that the entrance
to it remains unseen. The vessel is of cypress, one of those little
“dug-outs,” which the red men scooped for themselves with shells,
after having first charred with fire those portions of the timber
which they designed to remove. It skims over the waters like
an eggshell, carrying three persons as lightly as if it had no
freight. Two of them, one a man, the other a boy, work at the
paddles — not oars; the instrument is a short one, working close
at the side of the boat, even as the sea-fowl uses her feet. The
third, a man also, gray with years, sits at the stern, his head hanging
forward, his eyes brooding on the bottom of the canoe. They
are all red men. He at the stern is evidently a chief. He wears
a sort of coronal of feathers, and a gay crimson coat, hunting-shirt
fashion, with yellow fringes, evidently the manufacture of the
white man. There is a belt across his shoulders, from which
hangs the tomahawk; another about his waist, which secures his
knife; his right hand grasps bow and arrows, though the former
remains unbent, and the latter lie bundled together innocuous in

their rattlesnake quiver. The man who paddles is a common
Indian, one of the vileins, of poor costume and mean aspect. The
boy is habited somewhat like the chief, with crimson hunting-shirt,
and belt about the waist, but he carries neither knife nor tomahawk.
A bow and arrows suited to his youth lie behind him at
the bottom of the boat. He may use them at yonder turn of the
bay, where you see a little flock of English ducks plying their
beaks along the sedgy shallows.

The canoe passes out of sight, winding through the sinuous
passages of yonder marsh; and for a moment the silence resumes
its sway along the shores.

But, almost as soon as they disappear, another party comes
upon the scene. And he is a white man. He glides down to the
headlands, looking out upon the bay, from the deep shelter of the
thicket on our left. From this covert he has watched the progress
of the canoe; and there were moments when it swept so closely
to his place of watch, that it would have been easy, in the case of
one so lithe and vigorous of frame, to have leaped into it at a
single bound.

The stranger might be thirty-five or forty; a hale, fresh-looking
Saxon, with a frank, manly face, bronzed rather darkly by
our southern sun, but distinguished only by traits of health. His
face is somewhat spoiled for beauty by an ugly scar upon one
cheek. He is armed with knife and pistols, which he carries in
his girdle. His dress is that of the sailor, loose duck trowsers, a
round-jacket, a hat of coarse straw with broad blue ribbons round
it, in which sticks an earthen pipe of some bulk, with a stem of
Carolina cane. In his hand he carries a ship's spyglass, which
seems to have done service.

Following the “dug-out” of the red men with keen eyes as they
sped, he continued to trace their progress with the glass until they
were wholly covered from sight by the dense marshes of the creek.
Then, thrusting his glass beneath his arm, he turned away, making
a sort of moody march along the shore.

“Blast the red rascals,” quoth he musingly, “I can make nothing
of them. That creek leads out to the sea. But there are
islands they can stop at, and I suppose mean to do so. There is
Kiawah, and a dozen more, that they may work up to in such a
light-going craft. Well, we may look for a plenty of 'em soon,

now that fish begin to bite. But I want to be off before they
come. I 've no belief in the redskins anyhow, and want to keep
my own skin sound. Do n't want to be stuck full of arrows;
do n't want to be fried alive in pitch-pine. A Spanish dance
rather, with a score of pikes at the rear, to keep one in motion
where there 's no music!”

And the sturdy Englishman, for he was a genuine John Bull
and of a good order, took the pipe from his hat-band, replenished
the mill from his pocket, kindled his tinder, and throwing himself
down in a thicket, proceeded to smoke, taking out his pipe occasionally
to soliloquize. We gather up some of his random talks,
as they may help us in our own progress in this veracious
history.

“No, I 've no faith in these redskins. They 're at peace, they
say. Oh yes! and will smoke any quantity of tobacco in their
calumets, making their treaties and putting away their presents.
But it 's a sort of peace that do n't pay for the parchment. Just
so long as the colony's strong enough to lick 'em, and no longer,
will they keep the promise. It 's only when they see that they
can 't outnumber you — when they can count a bagnet for every
bow — that they 've any Christian bowels for peace. I wonder
what chance I 'd have here, in this lonesome spot, if these three
redskins now had come upon me napping. Would n't they have
been working in my wool, without saying `By your leave, brother'?
The red devils! call them human? I 'd as soon trust a monkey,
or a sucking tiger, in the matter of human bowels and affection!”

And the soliloquist lapsed away, after this speech, into that
dreamy sort of condition, which tobacco is so well calculated to
inspire, in which the mind is rather disposed to play than work,
or, at all events, in which it rather broods than cogitates. His
pipe exhausted, he rose, emptied the bowl of its ashes, stuck the
stem into his hat-band, braced his leather girdle closer to his
waist by a notch, and, after a long gaze out upon the sea, sauntered
away slowly into thicker woods.

As we follow him, we see that he makes his way through a sort
of labyrinth. Such thickets afford at all times a temporary cover;
but he so wound about in the present instance, took up so many
clues, and made such circuits, that, did we not follow him so

closely, we should never, of ourselves, be able to track his progress
to his fastness.

This lies in a still deeper thicket which stretches down to a
creek. Here he has a den which a bear might select, fenced in
by a close shrubbery, overshadowed by great trees, vines interlacing
them, and, as it were, wrapping them up into a mass which
never allowed a sunbeam to penetrate. Art has done something
to make the place snug enough for shelter from the weather.
There is a rude hut of poles, covered with bark; within it, there
is a box, an iron pot, a gridiron, and a jug. An old tarpaulin hat
and coat hang from the same branches. There is a light shotgun
in a cypress hollow; and, from all you see, you conclude that
our solitary has arranged for an abode that seems destined for
continuance awhile, and has been in use perhaps a month or two
already.

From this cabin he detaches hooks, line, and tackle, for fishing,
and takes his way down to the creek. There, snug in close harbor,
lies a skiff, of European build, light enough for a damsel to
manage. He embarks, glides down the stream, finds his way into
the bay already described, and, crossing toward a recess made by
the projection of two arms of the marsh, proceeds to anchor and
to cast his line. The position he has chosen is one to render him
safe from any shaft or shot from the shore; and we must not forget
to mention that his light gun lies convenient across the thwarts
of the boat. Satisfied that he has taken all due precautions, he
yields himself eagerly to the sport before him.

He may have been thus engaged for more than an hour, when
he started up suddenly, and his whole countenance assumed an
expression of intense interest. A dull, heavy sound was heard
reverberating along the waters.

“A shot!” he cries, “and from a brazen muzzle.”

His line is instantly drawn in — his anchor. He no longer
heeds the fish. He has had some sport. There are twenty
shining sides that glisten at the bottom of the boat. There are
sundry innocent victims that seem very much out of their proper
depths of water and security. But, now, he gives them neither
eye nor thought. His lines are in, his paddles out; his lusty sinews
are braced to eager exertion. He speeds once more across
the bay, passes up his creek of harborage, fastens his skiff to the

shore under close cover, leaps out, leaves his fish behind him, and,
catching up glass and gun, hastens once more to the headland
where we first encountered him.

“'T is she!” he exclaims, after sweeping the southwest passage
with his glass. “'T is the `Happy-go-Lucky' at last. Thank
God! I 'm sick enough of this waiting.

Following his glance, we see the object which occasions his delight.
A small vessel glides through the distant channels. Now
we catch a glimpse of her whole figure; a low long brigantine,
that seems to carry admirable heels. The next moment, her
white sails and slender masts only gleam above the sand dunes
and the marsh. Now she disappears behind a forest; and anon
emerges, running by a sand dune.

Our solitary runs up a tree that juts out appropriately on the
headland. He seems to have used it before for such a purpose.
He climbs like a cat; is evidently a sailor; is up, aloft; and, in
a moment, a white streamer is seen waving from the tree!

The scene grows animated with a new life. There is no longer
solitude. That one brave vessel, “walking the waters,” is “a
thing of life.” How beautifully she comes on! — seems rather to
fly than to swim; darts through the narrow channels, as if certain
of her route; and breaks into the bay, with all her canvass bellying
out under the embraces of the western breeze, as if Cleopatra
herself were on deck. And one, not unlike, and not less beautiful
than Cleopatra, was on her deck at that moment. But of her
hereafter.

Our solitary shouts joyous from his tree. Well may he shout.
It is with love that he shouts. She is his pet, his favorite; he
loves the gallant vessel, as if she were a bride.

And she is a beautiful creature. Even in the sight of us simple
landsmen, who know nothing of her peculiar virtues, how she
sails; how she can eat into the very eye of the wind; how clean
are her heels; how easy her motion; what storms she has borne
and baffled; what seas she has traversed; over what foes triumphed;
what wondrous ventures made; — even to us she comes
on as a beautiful creature, all ethereal — a thing of light, and
life, and flight, and perpetual motion! Her hull, long and narrow;
her tall, rakish masts; the vast spread of canvass which she
carries, and the elaborate grace of her spars and motion — these

strike even the inexperienced eye, as in proof of her speed and
beauty. She has a grace of her own; but you see, too, that there
are soul and skill in her management. You feel that there are
courage and conduct; that there is a master-spirit on board, who
wills, and she walks; who shouts, and she flies; who will carry her
forward when the seas are wildest, and train her on to the fearfullest
encounter with superior bulk, even as the swordfish darts to
the encounter with the whale! Even we simple landsmen can see
and conceive all these things as we gaze on the beautiful creature,
while she flings the feathery spray from her bows.

But the eyes of the seaman glitter as he beholds, and there is
a tear from those of the rough old salt, while ours do but smile.
His heart is in it. She is the creature of his affections. How
he envies the happy chieftain who sways the movements of his
painted beauty. His glance follows every plunge which she
makes through the pliant waters; and as she comes round upon
the breeze, without a word or voice, and darts forward, as an
arrow from the bow, straight for her harborage, he shouts — he
can not help but shout. He can no longer keep silent: he shouts
as he glides down the tree, and rather drops from it than descends.

“Hurrah! God bless the Happy-go-Lucky! hurrah! hurrah!”

The vessel makes her port. Our solitary is on the edge of the
cove to which her prow is bent. He is there to catch the rope
ere it touches earth, and hurry with it to the tree where he makes
her fast. The bolts rattle, the sails descend, and, with scarce a
ripple, she glides into the mouth of a little creek which has gratefully
felt her form before. Her masts mingle with the tall pines
that brood over on either side, so that it shall take very keen and
curious eyes to detect her presence. A voice, clear, sharp, and
musical, is heard from her decks: —

“Well, Jack Belcher, you see we have not forgotten you.”

The tones were affectionate.

“God bless your honor, and your honor's honor! May you
live for ever, and die at last in the `Happy-go-Lucky'! All's
well, your honor.”