, loving, and affable
people," to pursue his journey into North Carolina, his first forward
step was into a howling wilderness. The Santee settlement, though but
forty miles distant from Charleston, was a frontier--all beyond was
waste, thicket and forest, filled with unknown and fearful animals, and

"sliding reptiles of the ground,
Startlingly beautiful,"--

which the footstep of man dreaded to disturb. Of the wild beasts by
which it was tenanted, a single further extract from the journal of
Mr. Lawson will give us a sufficient and striking idea. He has left
the Santee settlements but a single day--probably not more than
fifteen miles. His Indian companion has made for his supper a bountiful
provision, having killed three fat turkeys in the space of half an hour.
"When we were all asleep," says our traveller, "in the beginning of the
night, we were awakened with the dismallest and most hideous noise that
ever pierced my ears. This sudden surprisal incapacitated us of guessing
what this threatening noise might proceed from; but our Indian pilot
(who knew these parts very well) acquainted us that it was customary to
hear such musick along that swamp-side, there being endless numbers
of panthers, tygers, wolves, and other beasts of prey, which take this
swamp for their abode in the day, coming in whole droves to hunt the
deer in the night, making this frightful ditty till day appears, then
all is still as in other places." (Page 26.)

Less noisy, except in battle, but even more fearful, were the half-human
possessors of the same regions, the savages, who, at that period, in
almost countless tribes or families, hovered around the habitations
of the European. Always restless, commonly treacherous, warring or
preparing for war, the red men required of the white borderer the
vigilance of an instinct which was never to be allowed repose. This
furnished an additional school for the moral and physical training of
our young Huguenots. In this school, without question, the swamp and
forest partisans of a future day took some of their first and
most valuable lessons in war. Here they learned to be watchful and
circumspect, cool in danger, steady in advance, heedful of every
movement of the foe, and--which is of the very last importance in such
a country and in such a warfare as it indicates--happily dextrous in
emergencies to seize upon the momentary casualty, the sudden chance--to
convert the most trivial circumst