he opposite bank of the river.

A steamboat sent me a screaming salute as the mouth of the Wappoo was
reached, which made me feel that, though in strange waters, friends were
all around me. I was now following one of the salt-water, steamboat
passages through the great marshes of South Carolina. From Wappoo Creek
I took the "Elliot Cut" into the broad Stono River, from behind the
marshes of which forests rose upon the low bluffs of the upland, and
rowed steadily on to Church Flats, where Wide Awake, with its landing
and store, nestled on the bank.

A little further on the tides divided, one ebbing through the Stono to
the sea, the other towards the North Edisto. "New Cut" connects Church
Flats with Wadmelaw Sound, a sheet of water not over two miles in width
and the same distance in length. From the sound the Wadmelaw River runs
to the mouth of the Dahoo. Vessels drawing eight and a half feet of
water can pass on full tides from Charleston over the course I was
following to the North Edisto River.

Leaving Wadmelaw Sound, a deep bend of the river was entered, when the
bluffs of Enterprise Landing, with its store and the ruins of a burnt
saw-mill, came into view on the left. Having rowed more than thirty
miles from the Ashley, and finding that the proprietor of Enterprise, a
Connecticut gentleman, had made preparations to entertain me, this day
of pleasant journeying ended.

The Cardinal-bird was carolling his matin song when the members of this
little New England colony watched my departure down the Wadmelaw the
next morning. The course was for the most part over the submerged
phosphate beds of South Carolina, where the remains of extinct species
were now excavated, furnishing food for the worn-out soils of America
and Europe, and interesting studies and speculations for men of science.
The Dahoo River was reached soon after leaving Enterprise. Here the
North Edisto, a broad river, passes the mouth of the Dahoo, in its
descent to the sea, which is about ten miles distant.

For two miles along the Dahoo the porpoises gave me strong proof of
their knowledge of the presence of the paper canoe by their rough
gambols, but being now in quiet inland waters, I could laugh at these
strange creatures as they broke from the water around the boat. At four
o'clock P. M. the extensive marshes of Jehossee Island were reached, and
I approached the village of the plantation through a short canal.

Out of the rice-fields of rich, b