re lakes covered the country
from near Abo, its chief city, to the far north, where the summer days
are "nearly all night long."

Painting in high colors the delights of his native land, he begged me to
visit it. Finally, as midnight drew near, this genial sailor insisted
upon putting me in his own comfortable state-room, while he slept upon a
lounge in the cabin.

One mile above the Rurik's anchorage was the phosphate-mill of the
Pacific Company, which was supplying Captain Bergelund, by lighters,
with his freight of unground fertilizer.

The next morning I took leave of the Rurik, but, instead of descending
the Bull River to the Coosaw, I determined to save time by crossing the
peninsula between the two rivers by means of two short creeks which were
connected at their sources by a very short canal near "the mines" of the
Phosphate Company. When I entered Horse Island Creek, at eleven o'clock,
the tide was on the last of the ebb, and I sat in the canoe a long time
awaiting the flood to float me up the wide ditch, which would conduct me
to the creek that emptied into the Coosaw. Upon the banks of the canal
three hours were lost waiting for the tide to give me one foot of water,
when I rowed into the second watercourse, and late in the afternoon
entered the wide Coosaw. The two creeks and the connecting canal are
called the Haulover Creek.

As I turned up the Coosaw, and skirted the now submerged marshes of its
left bank, two dredging-machines were at work up the river raising the
remains of the marine monsters of antiquity. The strong wind and
swashing seas being in my favor, the canoe soon arrived opposite the
spot of upland I had so longed to reach the previous night.

This was Chisolm's Landing, back of which were the phosphate works of
the Coosaw Mine Company. The inspector of phosphates, Mr. John Hunn,
offered me the hospitality of Alligator Hall, where he and some of the
gentlemen employed by the company resided in bachelor retirement. My
host described a mammal's tooth that weighed nearly fourteen pounds,
which had been taken from a phosphate mine; it had been sent to a public
room at Beaufort, South Carolina. A fossil shark's tooth, weighing four
and a half pounds, was also found, and a learned ichthyologist has
asserted that the owner of this remarkable relic of the past must have
been one hundred feet in length.

Beaufort was near at hand, and could be easily reached by entering
Brickyard Creek, the ent