Voyage of The Paper Canoe [100]
sat before the bright fire and listened to the story of my cruise. I doctored the sick pickaninny of my host, and made the family a pot of strong coffee. This negro could read, but he asked me to address a label he wished to attach to a bag of Sea-Island cotton of one hundred and sixty pounds' weight, which he had raised, and was to ship by the steamboat Lizzie Baker to a mercantile house in Savannah.
As I rested upon my blankets, which were spread upon the floor of the only comfortable room in the house, at intervals during the night the large form of the black stole softly in and bent over me to see if I were well covered up, and he as noiselessly piled live-oak sticks upon the dying embers to dry up the dampness which rose from the river.
He brought me a basin of cold water in the morning, and not possessing a towel clean enough for a white man, he insisted that I should use his wife's newly starched calico apron to wipe my face and hands upon. When I offered him money for the night's accommodation and the excellent oyster breakfast that his wife prepared for me, he said: "You may gib my wife whateber pleases you for her cooking, but nuffin for de food or de lodgings. I'se no nigger, ef I is a cullud man."
It was now Saturday, and as I rowed through the marsh thoroughfare called New Tea Kettle Creek, which connects Mud River with Doboy Sound near the southern end of Sapelo Island, I calculated the chances of finding a resting-place for Sunday. If I went up to the mainland through North and Darien rivers to the town of Darien, my past experience taught me that instead of enjoying rest I would become a forced exhibiter of the paper canoe to crowds of people. To avoid this, I determined to pass the day in the first hammock that would afford shelter and fire-wood; but as the canoe entered Doboy Sound, which, with its inlet, separates Sapelo from the almost treeless Wolf Island, the wind rose with such violence that I was driven to take refuge upon Doboy Island, a small marshy territory, the few firm acres of which were occupied by the settlement and steam saw-mill of Messrs. Hiltons, Foster & Gibson, a northern lumber firm.
Foreign and American vessels were anchored under the lee of protecting marshes, awaiting their cargoes of sawed deals and hewn timber; while rafts of logs, which had been borne upon the currents of the Altamaha and other streams from the far interior regions of pine forests, were collected here and manufactured into lumber.
One of the proprietors, a northern gentleman, occupied with his family a very comfortable cottage near the store and steam saw-mill. As the Doboy people had learned of the approach of the paper canoe from southern newspapers, the little craft was identified as soon as it touched the low shores of the island.
I could not find any kind of hotel or lodging-place in this settlement of Yankees, Canadians, and negroes, and was about to leave it in search of some lone hammock, when a mechanic kindly offered me the floor of an unfinished room in an unfinished house, in which I passed my Sunday trying to rest, and obtaining my meals at a restaurant kept by a negro.
A member of the Spaulding family, the owners of a part of Sapelo Island, called upon me, and seeing me in such inhospitable quarters, with fleas in hundreds invading my blankets, urged me to return with him to his island domain, where he might have an opportunity to make me comfortable. The kind gentleman little knew how hardened I had become to such annoyances as hard floors and the active flea. Such inconveniences had been robbed of their discomforts by the kind voices of welcome which, with few exceptions, came from every southern gentleman whose territory had been invaded by the paper canoe.
There was but one place of worship on the island, and that was under the charge of the negroes. Accepting the invitation of a nephew of the resident New England proprietor of Doboy Island to attend "de shoutings," we set out on Sunday evening for the temporary place of negro worship. A negro girl,
As I rested upon my blankets, which were spread upon the floor of the only comfortable room in the house, at intervals during the night the large form of the black stole softly in and bent over me to see if I were well covered up, and he as noiselessly piled live-oak sticks upon the dying embers to dry up the dampness which rose from the river.
He brought me a basin of cold water in the morning, and not possessing a towel clean enough for a white man, he insisted that I should use his wife's newly starched calico apron to wipe my face and hands upon. When I offered him money for the night's accommodation and the excellent oyster breakfast that his wife prepared for me, he said: "You may gib my wife whateber pleases you for her cooking, but nuffin for de food or de lodgings. I'se no nigger, ef I is a cullud man."
It was now Saturday, and as I rowed through the marsh thoroughfare called New Tea Kettle Creek, which connects Mud River with Doboy Sound near the southern end of Sapelo Island, I calculated the chances of finding a resting-place for Sunday. If I went up to the mainland through North and Darien rivers to the town of Darien, my past experience taught me that instead of enjoying rest I would become a forced exhibiter of the paper canoe to crowds of people. To avoid this, I determined to pass the day in the first hammock that would afford shelter and fire-wood; but as the canoe entered Doboy Sound, which, with its inlet, separates Sapelo from the almost treeless Wolf Island, the wind rose with such violence that I was driven to take refuge upon Doboy Island, a small marshy territory, the few firm acres of which were occupied by the settlement and steam saw-mill of Messrs. Hiltons, Foster & Gibson, a northern lumber firm.
Foreign and American vessels were anchored under the lee of protecting marshes, awaiting their cargoes of sawed deals and hewn timber; while rafts of logs, which had been borne upon the currents of the Altamaha and other streams from the far interior regions of pine forests, were collected here and manufactured into lumber.
One of the proprietors, a northern gentleman, occupied with his family a very comfortable cottage near the store and steam saw-mill. As the Doboy people had learned of the approach of the paper canoe from southern newspapers, the little craft was identified as soon as it touched the low shores of the island.
I could not find any kind of hotel or lodging-place in this settlement of Yankees, Canadians, and negroes, and was about to leave it in search of some lone hammock, when a mechanic kindly offered me the floor of an unfinished room in an unfinished house, in which I passed my Sunday trying to rest, and obtaining my meals at a restaurant kept by a negro.
A member of the Spaulding family, the owners of a part of Sapelo Island, called upon me, and seeing me in such inhospitable quarters, with fleas in hundreds invading my blankets, urged me to return with him to his island domain, where he might have an opportunity to make me comfortable. The kind gentleman little knew how hardened I had become to such annoyances as hard floors and the active flea. Such inconveniences had been robbed of their discomforts by the kind voices of welcome which, with few exceptions, came from every southern gentleman whose territory had been invaded by the paper canoe.
There was but one place of worship on the island, and that was under the charge of the negroes. Accepting the invitation of a nephew of the resident New England proprietor of Doboy Island to attend "de shoutings," we set out on Sunday evening for the temporary place of negro worship. A negro girl,