icinity of the shore. Heavy forests covered the uplands,
where a few houses were visible. Bull's Island, with pines and a few
cabbage palms, was on my left as I reached the entrance of the southern
thoroughfare at the end of the bay. Here, in the intricacies of creeks
and passages through the islands, and made careless by the possession
of Mr. Dennis' chart, I several times blundered into the wrong course;
and got no further that afternoon than Price's Inlet, though I rowed
more than twenty miles. Some eight miles of the distance rowed was lost
by ascending and descending creeks by mistake.

After a weary day's work shelter was found in a house close by the sea,
on the shores of Price's Inlet; where, in company with a young
fisherman, who was in the employ of Mr. Magwood, of Charleston, I slept
upon the floor in my blankets. Charles Hucks, the fisherman, asserted
that three albino deer were killed on Caper's Island the previous
winter. Two were shot by a negro, while he killed the third. Messrs.
Magwood, Terry, and Noland, of Charleston, one summer penned beside the
water one thousand old terrapin, to hold them over for the winter
season. These "diamond-backs" would consume five bushels of shrimps in
one hour when fed. A tide of unusual height washed out the terrapins
from their "crawl," and with them disappeared all anticipated results of
the experiment.

The next day, Caper's Island and Inlet, Dewees' Inlet, Long Island, and
Breach Inlet were successively passed, on strong tidal currents.
Sullivan's Island is separated from Long Island by Breach Inlet. While
following the creeks in the marshes back of Sullivan's Island, the
compact mass of buildings of Moultrieville, at its western end, at the
entrance of Charleston harbor, rose imposingly to view.

The gloomy mantle of darkness was settling over the harbor as the paper
canoe stole quietly into its historic waters. Before me lay the quiet
bay, with old Fort Sumter rising from the watery plain like a spectral
giant, as though to remind one that this had been the scene of mighty
struggles. The tranquil waters softly rippled a response to the touch of
my oars; all was peace and quiet here, where, only a few short years
before, the thunder of cannon woke a thousand echoes, and the waves were
stained with the lifeblood of America,--where war, with her iron throat,
poured out destruction, and God's creatures, men, made after his own
image, destroyed each other ruthlessly,