Ten miles of this black current were passed over, when the first signs of civilization appeared, in the shape of a sombre-looking, two-storied house, located upon a point of the mainland which entered the swamp on the left shore of the river.At this point the river widened to five or six rods, and at intervals land appeared a few inches above the water.Wherever the pine land touched the river a pig-pen of rails offered shelter and a gathering-place for the hogs, which are turned loose by the white Cracker to feed upon the roots and mast of the wilderness.
Reeve's Ferry, on the right bank, with a little store and turpentine-still, twenty miles from Old Dock, was the next sign of the presence of man in this swamp.The river now became broad as I approached Piraway Ferry, which is two miles below Piraway Farm.Remembering the warnings of the squire as to the "awful wretches in the big pine woods," I kept a sharp lookout for the old women who were to give me so much trouble, but the raftsmen on the river explained that though Jim Gore had told me the truth, Ihad misunderstood his pronunciation of the word reaches, or river bends, which are called in this vicinity wretches.The reaches referred to by Mr.Gore were so long and straight as to afford open passages for wind to blow up them, and these fierce gusts of head winds give the raftsmen much trouble while poling their rafts against them.
My fears of ill treatment were now at rest, for my tiny craft, with her sharp-pointed bow, was well adapted for such work.Landing at the ferry where a small scow or flat-boat was resting upon the firm land, the ferryman, Mr.Daniel Dunkin, would not permit me to camp out of doors while his log-cabin was only one mile away on the pine-covered uplands.He told me that the boundary-line between North and South Carolina crossed this swamp three and a half miles below Piraway Ferry, and that the first town on the river Waccamaw, in South Carolina, Conwayborough, was a distance of ninety miles by river and only thirty miles by land.There was but one bridge over the river, from its head to Conwayborough, and it was built by Mr.
James Wortham, twenty years before, for his plantation.This bridge was twenty miles below Piraway, and from it by land to a settlement on Little River, which empties into the Atlantic, was a distance of only five miles.A short canal would connect this river and its lumber regions with Little River and the sea.
For the first time in my experience as a traveller I had entered a country where the miles were short.When fifteen years old I made my first journey alone and on foot from the vicinity of Boston to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.This boyish pedestrian trip occupied about twenty-one days, and covered some three hundred miles of hard tramping.New England gives honest measure on the finger-posts along her highways.The traveller learns by well-earned experience the length of her miles; but in the wilderness of the south there is no standard of five thousand two hundred and eighty feet to a statute mile, and the watermen along the sea-coast are ignorant of the fact that one-sixtieth of a degree of latitude (about six thousand and eighty feet) is the geographical and nautical mile of the cartographer, as well as the "knot" of the sailor.
At Piraway Ferry no two of the raftsmen and lumbermen, ignorant or educated, would give the same distance, either upon the lengths of surveyed roads or unmeasured rivers."It is one hundred and sixty-five miles by river from Piraway Ferry to Conwayborough," said one who had travelled the route for years.The most moderate estimate made was that of ninety miles by river.The reader, therefore, must not accuse me of overstating distances while absent from the seaboard, as my friends of the Coast Survey Bureau have not yet penetrated into these interior regions with their theodolites, plane-tables, and telametrerods.To the canoeist, who is ambitious to score up miles instead of collecting geographical notes, these wild rivers afford an excellent opportunity to satisfy his aims.
From sixty to eighty miles can be rowed in ten hours as easily as forty miles can be gone over upon a river of slow current in the northern states.There is, I am sorry to say, a class of American travellers who "do" all the capitals of Europe in the same business-like way, and if they have anything to say in regard to every-day life in the countries through which they pass, they forget to thank the compiler of the guide-book for the information they possess.
There was but one room in the cabin of my new acquaintance, who represented that class of piny-woods people called in the south -- because they subsist largely upon corn, -- Corn Crackers, or Crackers.These Crackers are the "poor white folks" of the planter, and "de white trash" of the old slave, who now as a freedman is beginning to feel the responsibility of his position.
These Crackers are a very kind-hearted people, but few of them can read or write.The children of the negro, filled with curiosity and a newborn pride, whenever opportunity permits, attend the schools in large numbers; but the very indolent white man seems to be destitute of all ambition, and his children, in many places in the south, following close in the father's footsteps, grow up in an almost unimaginable ignorance.
