Voyage of The Paper Canoe [72]
made with their own hands, in the bow of the boat. After rowing a half-mile, I took a lingering look at the shore, where those who four days ago were strangers, now waved an adieu as friends. They had been stript of their wealth, though the kind old planter had never raised his hand against the government of his fathers. This family, like thousands of people in the south, had suffered for the rash deeds of others. While the political views of this gentleman differed from those of the stranger from Massachusetts, it formed no barrier to their social intercourse, and did not make him forget to exhibit the warm feelings of hospitality which so largely influence the Southerner. I went to him, as a traveller in search of truth, upon an honest errand. Under such circumstances a Northerner does not require a letter of introduction to nine out of ten of the citizens of the fifteen ex-slave states, which cover an area of eight hundred and eighty thousand square miles, and where fourteen millions of people desire to be permitted to enjoy the same privileges as the Constitution of the United States guarantees to all the states north of Mason and Dixon's line.
From Sloop Landing, on my new friends' plantation, to New Topsail Inlet I had a brisk row of five miles. Vessels drawing eight feet of water can reach this landing from the open sea upon a full tide. The sea was rolling in at this ocean door as my canoe crossed it to the next marsh thoroughfare, which connected it with Old Topsail Inlet, where the same monotonous surroundings of sand-hills and marshes are to be found.
The next tidal opening was Rich Inlet, which had a strong ebb running through it to the sea. From it I threaded the thoroughfares up to the mainland, reaching at dusk the "Emma Nickson Plantation." The creeks were growing more shallow, and near the bulkhead, or middleground, where tides from two inlets met, there was so little water and so many oyster reefs, that, without a chart, the route grew more and more perplexing in character. It was a distance of thirty miles to Cape Fear, and twenty miles to New Inlet, which was one of the mouths of Cape Fear River. From the plantation to New Inlet, the shallow interior sheets of water with their marshes were called Middle, Masonboro, and Myrtle sounds. The canoe could have traversed these waters to the end of Myrtle Sound, which is separated from Cape Fear River by a strip of land only one mile and a half wide, across which a portage can be made to the river. Barren and Masonboro are the only inlets which supply the three little sounds above mentioned with water, after Rich Inlet is passed.
The coast from Cape Fear southward eighty miles, to Georgetown, South Carolina, has several small inlets through the beach, but there are no interior waters parallel with the coast in all that distance, which can be of any service to the canoeist for a coast route. It therefore became necessary for me to follow the next watercourse that could be utilized for reaching Winyah Bay, which is the first entrance to the system of continuous watercourses south of Cape Fear.
The trees of the Nickson Plantation hid the house of the proprietor from view; but upon beaching my canoe, a drove of hogs greeted me with friendly grunts, as if the hospitality of their master infected the drove; and, as it grew dark, they trotted across the field, conducting me up to the very doors of the planter's home, where Captain Mosely, late of the Confederate army, gave me a soldier's hearty welcome.
"The war is over," he said, "and any northern gentleman is welcome to what we have left." Until midnight, this keen-eyed, intelligent officer entertained me with a flow of anecdotes of the war times, his hair-breadth escapes, &c.; the conversation being only interrupted when he paused to pile wood upon the fire, the chimney-place meantime glowing like a furnace. He told me that Captain Maffitt, of the late Confederate navy, lived at Masonboro, on the sound; and that had I called upon him, he could have furnished, as an old officer
From Sloop Landing, on my new friends' plantation, to New Topsail Inlet I had a brisk row of five miles. Vessels drawing eight feet of water can reach this landing from the open sea upon a full tide. The sea was rolling in at this ocean door as my canoe crossed it to the next marsh thoroughfare, which connected it with Old Topsail Inlet, where the same monotonous surroundings of sand-hills and marshes are to be found.
The next tidal opening was Rich Inlet, which had a strong ebb running through it to the sea. From it I threaded the thoroughfares up to the mainland, reaching at dusk the "Emma Nickson Plantation." The creeks were growing more shallow, and near the bulkhead, or middleground, where tides from two inlets met, there was so little water and so many oyster reefs, that, without a chart, the route grew more and more perplexing in character. It was a distance of thirty miles to Cape Fear, and twenty miles to New Inlet, which was one of the mouths of Cape Fear River. From the plantation to New Inlet, the shallow interior sheets of water with their marshes were called Middle, Masonboro, and Myrtle sounds. The canoe could have traversed these waters to the end of Myrtle Sound, which is separated from Cape Fear River by a strip of land only one mile and a half wide, across which a portage can be made to the river. Barren and Masonboro are the only inlets which supply the three little sounds above mentioned with water, after Rich Inlet is passed.
The coast from Cape Fear southward eighty miles, to Georgetown, South Carolina, has several small inlets through the beach, but there are no interior waters parallel with the coast in all that distance, which can be of any service to the canoeist for a coast route. It therefore became necessary for me to follow the next watercourse that could be utilized for reaching Winyah Bay, which is the first entrance to the system of continuous watercourses south of Cape Fear.
The trees of the Nickson Plantation hid the house of the proprietor from view; but upon beaching my canoe, a drove of hogs greeted me with friendly grunts, as if the hospitality of their master infected the drove; and, as it grew dark, they trotted across the field, conducting me up to the very doors of the planter's home, where Captain Mosely, late of the Confederate army, gave me a soldier's hearty welcome.
"The war is over," he said, "and any northern gentleman is welcome to what we have left." Until midnight, this keen-eyed, intelligent officer entertained me with a flow of anecdotes of the war times, his hair-breadth escapes, &c.; the conversation being only interrupted when he paused to pile wood upon the fire, the chimney-place meantime glowing like a furnace. He told me that Captain Maffitt, of the late Confederate navy, lived at Masonboro, on the sound; and that had I called upon him, he could have furnished, as an old officer