I left Augusta on the evening of the twenty-fifthJan. 1849 with real regret, for the beauty of the city, ornamented with water-oaks, wild olives, holly, palmettoes, magnolias, and other evergreens; the gardens blooming; the orange-trees budding in the bland air, and the courtesy of the citizens whom I met, wooed me to a longer tarry. But "home, sweet home," beckoned me away, and at eight o'clock I entered a mail-coach, with a single fellow-passenger, for a ride of fifty-two miles to the "Ninety-mile Station," on the Great Central Railway. I had a pleasant companion while he kept awake, and we whiled away the tedious night hours by agreeable conversation until we reached Waynesborough, *** where we exchanged horses and the mails. After leaving the village, I endeavored to sleep. My companion complained that he never could slumber in a coach; and I presume his loud snoring always keeps him awake, for in ten minutes after leaving the post-office his nasal pipes were chanting bass to the alto of the coach-wheels.
We breakfasted at sunrise at a log-house in the forest, and arrived at the rail-way, on the upper border of Severn county, near the banks of the Great Ogeeche, at eleven o'clock, where we dined, and at one departed for Savannah. Swamps, plantations, and forests, with scarcely a hill, or even an undulation, compose the monotonous scenery. While enjoying the pleasing anticipation of an early arrival in Savannah, our locomotive became disabled by the breaking of a piston-rod. We were yet forty miles from our goal, in the midst of a vast swamp, ten miles from any habitation, near the road. The sun went down; the twilight faded away, and yet we were immovable. At intervals the engineer managed to start his steed and travel a short distance, and then stop. Thus we crawled along, and at eleven
* The brother of young M'Koy, who was hanged and scalped by Brown's orders, and who, thirsting for revenge, had joined Clark before Augusta, endeavored to kill Brown, but was prevented by the guard. It was during this march to Savannah, when at Silver Bluff, that Brown encountered Mrs. M'Koy, as related on page 716.
** M'Call, ii., 370; Lee, 238; Ramsay, ii., 238.
*** Waynesborough is the capital of Burke county. It is upon a branch of Brier Creek, about thirty-five miles above the place of General Ashe's defeat.
Detention in a Swamp.—Picturesque Scenery.—Savannah.—Greene and Pulaski Monument
o'clock at night we reached the thirty mile station, where we supped at the expense of the rail way company. At our haltings we started light-wood fires, whose blaze amid the tall trees draped with moss, the green cane-brakes, and the dry oases, garnished with dwarf palmettoes, produced the most picturesque effects.
