Part 5
But with all their witching spell these Flats are a capital place in which to get lost. Forewarned, we kept to the right when in doubt, for the Great Pee Dee comes in on the right side. All afternoon we paddled through these bewitched lagoons, and the sun, a great, hazy red ball, was just sinking when the rush of yellow water told us we were in the Great Pee Dee. We both heaved a sigh of relief, and then laughed at each other. Neither had spoken of it, but we had both been contemplating the prospect of a chilly night, cold and without a warm supper, spent in the canoe among the misty reaches of water and cypress.
The river’s swift current carried us along without paddling and for half an hour we idly watched the rearguard of the great duck army hurrying northwards from their winter quarters among the rice islands at the mouth of the Great Pee Dee. They came as if flung from catapults, flying high, singly, in couples, trios, and little flocks of five or six. Often in the evening stillness we could hear the whr-r-r-r-r of their strong wings long before they would burst out of the twilight. Then a black streak would be drawn against the pink, western sky, and be lost in the hazy distance over the Buzzard Flats. We were too late for duck shooting, but just in time for the run of spring shad, and we drifted by two rowboats in which some singing darkies toiled with a giant’s net loaded with the fish that soon would be commanding a fancy price in the Northern markets.
That night we camped our last camp on the river. High up on the right bank we pitched our tent under a spreading live oak, and we sat silently smoking till our fire had died to a handful of glowing embers. Tomorrow we would be back in the world of today again, the bustling, busy world of men; but tonight we were still in the great, wild woods, close to the heart of Mother Earth. A chugging little flat-bottomed steamer awoke us in the morning. She puffed laboriously up stream, and threatened to soon tire of being overloaded with bulging cotton bales, and drop quietly to the river bottom. We made a late start, and slipped reluctantly by the banks of magnolias, wild honeysuckle, and yellow jasmines. Here was the third stage of the trip. We had come out of the jungle into a bit of the Old South, a bit curiously preserved from the hard blows of Fate.
Behind the magnolias we caught glimpses of great colonial mansions, many of them in ruins, others we knew in the hands of strangers, for the rice islands across the river are now all wild and untilled. These rice islands have a strange history. ’Way back in Colonial days they were given over to indigo culture, and in Georgetown Indigo Growers’ Hall, an impressive building, still bears silent testimony to the importance of the industry that was destroyed by better communication with the East. During the Revolution, these same islands sheltered Marion, the Swamp Fox, and his ragged patriots, and Yohahanna’s Ferry is still pointed out as their favorite crossing place to and from their raids on the British forces. Later these islands became huge rice plantations, accounted the most valuable land in the South and supporting the flower of southern chivalry. The Civil War laid waste this gardenland, but the rice enabled it to regain a shadow of its former greatness, till, twenty years ago, it was a fourth time ruined by the discovery that rice could be more economically grown in Texas.
Warm-hearted friends greeted us with open hospitality in this country, and when we reached Georgetown, after ten glorious days on the river, we were feted as if we had discovered both Poles and been on a little side trip to the moon.
It took us ten days to follow the winding Lumbee down to the ocean. If one wishes to break our record it will not be a hard task, for we went along at a go-as-you-please pace. Anyone who has only canoed in the North will find curious things and new delights along this little-known stream. Do not believe it, if some veteran canoeist says “muddy water” to you. The last forty miles are muddy water, but, even at flood-time, the Lumbee and the Little Pee Dee twisting through the Sandhills are clear, or at most stained with juniper. Remember, too, that they glide between the green banks when northern streams are frozen hard. January in North Carolina is amazingly like October in Maine or Wisconsin. The Lumbee is the canoeist’s great excuse to dodge Winter.
=Transcriber’s Notes=
Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Illustrations have been moved nearer to the text to which they refer.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation and compound words have been maintained as printed.