lds some sixty thousand acres of the swamp lands of the
Waccamaw, escorted me in his yacht, with a party of ladies and
gentlemen, five miles across the lake to my point of departure. It was
now noon, and our little party picnicked under the lofty trees which
rise from the low shores of Lake Waccamaw.

A little later we said our adieu, and the paper canoe shot into the
whirling current which rushes out of the lake through a narrow aperture
into a great and dismal swamp. Before leaving the party, Mr. Carroll had
handed me a letter addressed to Mr. Hall, who was in charge of a
turpentine distillery on my route. "It is _twenty_ miles by the river to
my friend Hall's," he said, "but in a straight line the place is just
_four_ miles from here." Such is the character of the Waccamaw, this
most crooked of rivers.

I had never been on so rapid and continuous a current. As it whirled me
along the narrow watercourse I was compelled to abandon my oars and use
the paddle in order to have my face to the bow, as the abrupt turns of
the stream seemed to wall me in on every side. Down the tortuous, black,
rolling current went the paper canoe, with a giant forest covering the
great swamp and screening me from the light of day. The swamps were
submerged, and as the water poured out of the thickets into the river it
would shoot across the land from one bend to another, presenting in
places the mystifying spectacle of water running up stream, but not up
an inclined plain. Festoons of gray Spanish moss hung from the weird
limbs of monster trees, giving a funeral aspect to the gloomy forest,
while the owls hooted as though it were night. The creamy, wax-like
berries of the mistletoe gave a Druidical aspect to the woods, for this
parasite grew upon the branches of many trees.

One spot only of firm land rose from the water in sixteen miles of
paddling from the lake, and passing it, I went flying on with the
turbulent stream four miles further, to where rafts of logs blocked the
river, and the sandy banks, covered with the upland forest of pines,
encroached upon the lowlands. This was Old Dock, with its turpentine
distillery smoking and sending out resinous vapors.

Young Mr. Hall read my letter and invited me to his temporary home,
which, though roughly built of unplaned boards, possessed two
comfortable rooms, and a large fireplace, in which light-wood, the
terebinthine heart of the pine-tree, was cheerfully blazing.

I had made the twen