And I'll protect it now.
'Twas my forefather's hand
That placed it near his cot;
There, woodman, let it stand,
Thy ax shall harm it not! "—Morris.
I sketched the venerable house near by, the property of Colonel William Cummington during the Revolution, and marking the position of the stump of the magnolia, preserved for posterity a sketch of what tradition calls the Council Tree, with its surroundings.
It was on the bright and balmy day of my departure that I visited Sullivan's Island, and made the sketch printed on page 757. From thence I crossed over to Haddrell's Point (now Point Pleasant), and after passing an hour there, where so many of the brave patriots of South Carolina suffered a long imprisonment, I returned by steam-boat to the city. There are no remains of revolutionary fortifications at Point Pleasant, and it is now famous in the minds of the citizens of Charleston only as a delightful summer resort.
At three o'clock in the afternoon I left Charleston for home, in a steam-packet bound to Wilmington, bearing with me many mementoes of the war for independence at the South, and filled with pleasing recollections of a journey of several weeks among the inhabitants of that sunny land where I had enjoyed the hospitality and kindness of true Republicans, keenly alive to the reflected glory of their patriot fathers, and devotedly attached to the free institutions of our common country, the fruits of a happy union.
The waters of the harbor were unruffled by a breeze, and I anticipated a delightful voyage to the Capo Fear; but as the city and fortifications receded, and we crossed the bar to the broad bosom of the Atlantic, we found it heaving with long, silent undulations, the effects of the subsiding anger of a storm. Sea-sickness came upon me, and I went supperless to my berth, where I remained until we were fairly within the mouth of the Cape Fear, at Smith's Island, on the following morning. The low wooded shores of Carolina approached nearer and nearer, and at eight o'clock we landed at the ancient town of Wilmington, on the eastern side of the Cape Fear.
I contemplated spending a day at Wilmington, but circumstances requiring me to hasten homeward, I was there only during the hour while waiting for the starting of the rail-way cars for the North. I had but little opportunity to view the town, where Republicanism was most rife on the sea-board of North Carolina before and during the Revolution; but by the kindness of friends there, especially of Edward Kidder, Esq., I am enabled to give, traditionally and pictorially all that I could have possibly obtained by a protracted visit.