In the next nineteen miles we passed several islands, giving a relief to the eye, by their variety and some fine views.
We then passed on the right, the Grand lake, now grown up with willows, where the river formerly entered, and encircled a cotton tree island, which still rears itself predominant over the surrounding willow marsh. Two miles below, the old willow channel returns again, diagonally, to the present river bank, on the opposite side of which, on the left, the old channel seems to have been continued, there surrounding {275} another clump of cotton trees, called Seary’s island, (No. 90) which is about a mile long, and which confines the present channel within a limit of a quarter of a mile, which contraction shoots the river so strongly against the low willow bend of the old channel below, that not being able to bear the impetus of the torrent in the present flooded state of the river, the tall willows are undermined, and falling every moment, dash up the white foam in their fall, and sometimes spring up again, as the root reaches the bottom of the river, in such a manner as to impress the beholder with astonishment.
Fourteen miles more brought us to island No. 92, where we moored for the night. We found abundance of blackberries on this island, but in gathering them, we were attacked by such myriads of musquitoes, generated by a pond in the middle, that we named it Musquitoe island.
June 4th, in eleven miles we arrived at Crow’s nest island, where invited by the beauty of its appearance, some of us landed in the skiff. It is a little narrow island, about a hundred and fifty paces long by forty broad. It is sufficiently raised above inundation, and is very dry and pleasant, with innumerable blackbirds, which have their nests amongst the thirty tall cotton wood trees it contains. It is covered with brush, through which is an old path from one end to the other. A quantity of drift wood lies on its upper end, which projecting, forms a fine boat harbour just below it, quite out of the current. There are but few musquitoes on the dry part, but a low, drowned point, covered with small poplars, and extending a hundred yards at the lower end swarms with them, and many of the largest size, called gannipers. These venemous and troublesome insects remind me of a humorous story I have heard, which I take the liberty of introducing here.
Some gentlemen in South Carolina had dined together, and while the wine circulated freely after dinner the conversation turned on the quantity of musquitoes generated in the rice swamps of that country. One of the gentlemen said that those insects never troubled him, and that he believed people in general complained more of them than they had occasion to do—that for his part he would not notice them, were he naked in a rice swamp. Another of the company (according to the custom of the country, where all arguments terminate in a wager) offered him a considerable bet that he would not lie quietly on his face, naked, in the swamp, a quarter of an hour. The other took him up, and all the party immediately adjourned to the place fixed on. The gentleman stripped, lay down, and bore with the most resolute fortitude the attack of the hostile foe. The time had almost expired, and his antagonist fearing he must lose his wager, seized a fire brand from one of the negro fires that happened to be near, and approaching slyly applied it to a fleshy part of his prostrate adversary, who, not able to bear the increased pain, clapped his hand on the part, jumped up, and cried out “A ganniper by G——.” He then acknowledged he had lost his wager, by that “damned ganniper,” and the party returned to the house to renew their libations to Bacchus, and to laugh over the comical termination of the bet.
Crow’s nest island is a beautiful little spot, and is about a mile from the right bank, and half a mile from the left, and only a mile below the commencement of a noble reach of the river, which is perfectly straight for nine miles (therefore called the Nine mile reach) in a S. S. W. direction, and upwards of a mile wide.
Eighteen miles from the lower end of the Nine mile reach, we came to three new settlements on the left, within a mile of each other. The banks here {277} are not more than three feet above the present level of the river. Eleven miles farther, in an intricate pass between two islands captain Wells’s inside boat was driven by the current against a quantity of drift wood, the shock of which parted her from his other boat and mine. She stuck fast, and we continued down the sound between the islands about two miles, when seeing a convenient place for stopping, we rowed in, and made fast in a fine eddy, among willows at the lower point of the right hand island, where we were soon after joined by Wells with his boat which he had got off again without damage.
Whiskey having been dealt liberally to the boatmen to induce them to exert themselves while the boat was in danger, it began to operate by the time they rejoined us, the consequence of which was a battle royal, in which some of the combatants attempted to gouge each other, but my boat’s company interfering, separated them, and quelled the disturbance, after which I delivered them a long lecture on that shameful, unmanly, and inhuman practice, condemning it in such strong terms, as to almost provoke an attack against myself, but I at last succeeded, or thought I succeeded, in making them ashamed of themselves.
The two islands between which we had just floated, are mentioned improperly in the Navigator as one island, which is numbered 100. The channel between is very narrow, the ship channel in this stage of the water being evidently to the right of both, and a small willow island besides to the right of them.—The second of the islands is properly No. 100.[196]
The musquitoes were this night, as usual, insupportable, spite of smoke which we used almost to suffocation.