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 to