There was the residence of General Sumter after the war, and in his honor the surrounding district was named. * After skirting the Wateree Swamp some distance, the road passes through a high sand bluff, and then crosses the great morass to the river, a distance of four miles. Beyond that stream, it joins the rail-way from Columbia. Through the swamp, the iron rails are laid upon a strong wooden frame-work, high enough to overtop a cane-brake. The passage is made at a slow rate to avoid accidents. The scenery was really grand, for below were the green canes waving like billows in the wind, while upon either side of the avenue cut for the road, towered mighty cypresses and gum-trees, almost every branch draped with long moss. Clustered around their stalely trunks were the holly, water-oak, laurel, and gall-hush, with their varied tints of green; and among these, flitting in silence, were seen the gray murk-
* I was informed that the house of General Sumter and several others, with a large tract of land, was owned by a mulatto named Ellison, who, with his wife and children, were once slaves. He was a mechanic, and with the proceeds of his labor he purchased the freedom of himself and family. He is now ( 1850) about sixty years of age, and owns a large number of slaves. His sons and daughters are educated, and the former occupy the position of overseers on his plantation. Mr. Ellison is regarded as one of the most honorable business men in that region.
** This little sketch is from the pencil of J. Addison Richards, one of our most accomplished landscape-painters. The cypress "knees," as they are called, are here truthfully shown. They extend from the roots of the trees, sometimes as much as two feet above the earth or the water, but never exhibit branches or leaves. They appear like smooth-pointed stumps.
Fort Motte.—Remains of the Revolution.—Position of the Americans there.—General Marion
ing-biril and the brilliant scarlet tanniger. Here, I was told, opossums and wild eats abound, and upon the large dry tracts of the swamp wild deers are often seen.
We arrived at the junction station at a little past eight o'clock, and, crossing a narrow part of the Congaree Swamp and River, reached Fort Motte Station, on the southern side of that stream, before nine, a distance of forty-four miles from Camden.
The plantation of Mrs. Rebecca Motte, whose house, occupied and stockaded by the British, was called Fort Motte, lies chiefly upon a high rolling plain, near the Buck's Head Neck, on the Congaree, a little above the junction of that river with the Wateree, thirty-three miles below Columbia, the capital of the state.