9Hr |f 259 .H42 Copy 1 !»«««f»Uiort of quail shooting lies in working and watching the dogs. All day long the quail shooter has before him a liv- ing example of strength, of perseverance, of good faith, of self-restraint, the very cardi- nal virtues of good sportsmanship. It is a spiritual experience that is good for any man. And we love our four-footed partner in sport not alone because he is a splendid animal, good to look at, intelligent, and faithful ; not only because he shows us good sport ; but also because his own good sport- manship appeals to the best sportsmanship in ourselves. 66 The Clay Birds WE sat round a blazing pine-knot fire in the big hotel's cozy smoking room, and every man in the group, except the Banker, had been hobby-horse riding. Each had enjoyed a glorious day in the outdoors, pursuing his favorite sport. Each, tired with that delicious, restful tiredness that comes like a benison at the close of every day of keen sport, luxuriated in his deep leather chair. The fresh, pine-scented winds had swept the cobwebs from our brains, and, as the fire snapped and crackled, the bright flashes of friendly repartee, witty thrust and ready parry, flew round the circle. The Collegian and his Father had started it by holding, as golfers are so very apt to do, a post mortem over their afternoon round. This led the Editor, who had slipped away from the impatient telephone and the ever-hungry presses for a couple of weeks' winter vacation, to make some 67 Sandhills Sketches caustic comparisons between golf and his favorite tennis. But casualties on this liard and long-fought battlefield were tactfully avoided by the Manufacturer, who boldly asserted that both these good sports paled into utter insignificance before the most glorious sport of quail-shooting. He proved it too^ — ^to his own complete satisfaction — and then the polo-player championed his hobby, and was followed very naturally by a hard-riding fox-hunter. Then we had another round of golf, and so back again to the wide-ranging bird-dogs and the whirl- ing quail coveys. "I wonder,'^ put in the Banker, "if you gentlemen have read a poem of Whitcomb Kiley's called ^His Favorite Fruit?' It's a little dialect sketch in which some Hoosier farmers, gathered 'round the iron stove in a little cross-roads grocery, discuss their favorite fruits. Each one holds out for his own personal choice — ^the apple, the peach, the pear, the watermelon — and slanders un- mercifully the taste of the last speaker. But all the time the teller of this story ^chaws on an' sez nawthin'.' Finally one of the party asks him point blank, ^Jim, 68 Sandhills Sketches what's yourn fav'rite fruit?' He chaws on fer quite a spell an' then lie sez, slow an' solemn-like, 'Terbaccer,' an' you oughter heard 'em roar." "You," continued the Banker, when the laugh had subsided, "have been each slan- dering the other's favorite sport, while I have been ^chawin' on an' saying nawthin',' and I wonder who of you will laugh at me and my favorite sport as at the Hoosier farmer whose favorite fruit was tobacco." "Speaking for myself," remarked the Edi- tor, "I laugh at no sport except tiddle-de- winks." "How a/bout ping-pong?" asked the Col- legian. "That must have been before your day — did you ever play it?" "No, thank Heaven, but " "Ah, I thought not. If you had, you'd not laugh at it, either," and the Editor chuckled to himself reminiscently. "I came down here to Pinehurst," con- tinued the Banker, "to get some good trap- shooting." "Huh!" — a short, sarcastic "Huh!" — came from the depths of the chair where the 69 Sandhills Sketches Manufacturer, after a long day tramping over tlie Sandhills behind his brace of pointers, was resting. "I expected just that from you, Charlie," laughed the Banker. "Simply *huh!' and nothing more can express your wonder and contempt. For the life of you, you cannot understand why on earth a supposedly sen- sible man should come down here into the very heart of one of the best quail counties in North Carolina to smash clay birds at the trap, can you?'' The Manufacturer shook his head vigorously. "Well," continued the Banker again, "I felt just as you do a couple of years ago. I followed your favorite sport too many years to start slandering it now. I used to come down here quail-shooting before you were out of school, but I can tell you that trap-shooting is good sport, too. You are a Doubting Thomas, but why don't you try it sometime? It's not so sim- ple as it looks." Before we broke up an hour later, we had made an appointment to visit the traps next morning to witness the Banker's promised conversion of the Manufacturer into a trap- shooter. None of us will ever forget that 70 Sandhills Sketches skeptic^s immense surprise when lie found the little clay birds so very "gamey" that he only broke nine out of his first string of twenty-five. It was a hard jolt to his pride, but he stuck out his jaw, tucked his gun under his cheek, and tackled another string. He did better later, and soon he got into the habit of joining the little parties at the squatty little gun clubhouse in the center of the big open field over against the great red barns of the model dairy. He came sheep- ishly at first, but later with brazen effront- ery. In the end, he decided to stay over a week longer than he had planned, just to enter in the Mid- Winter Handicap Tourna- ment the last of January. In no very strict historical sense can the adjective "new" be fairly applied to trap- shooting, and yet there is a newness in the recent vogue of the sport. The live, tame pigeon, thrown into the air, frightened and confused, from a collapsible wooden cage, has long since been supplanted by a little clay disc, hurled with lightning speed from a steel spring trap. This was the starting point of the development of trap-shooting as we know it in America today, and this 71 Sandhills Sketches took place years ago. It is a harder, more sporty thing to smash a whizzing clay bird to smithereens than to knock down a fright- ened tame pigeon, and it is more humane. This change of targets put a keen zest into trap-shooting and took out a bitter reproach. But till recently, the growth of trap-shoot- ing has been slow. In four short years, however, the number of active trap-shooters has increased fourfold; from about 100,000 to about 425,000. During the same period trap-shooting clubs have increased from 1,000 to 4,000, and it is estimated that about 500,000,000 clay pigeons are thrown into the air each year at the shooter's sharp com- mand, "Pull!'' In, one short Presidental term, trap-shooting has sprung forward from a low place among the so-called minor sports to occupy a position second only to baseball in the number of its devotees. We are not apt to appreciate what this really means without the help of the cold figures above. There is a world of difference in being a "rooter" and in being a "player," and the one simple little fact that each trap-shooter is a player himself, or herself, is just what 72 SNOW IN THE SANDHILLS OLD SLAVE QUARTERS YOHANNAHAS FERRY Sandhills Sketches gives the sport its strongest grip upon the interest of its followers. That tense mo- ment of "two out and the bases filled'^ ; the jerky, crashing advance of the battling human machine carrying a pigskin ball down the field toward the goal-posts; the rush of the ponies and the hollow click of mallet against polo ball — all these tighten the muscles and quicken the heart-beat of any live sportsman, but, as the psychologist says, these are all external stimuli. Let the same man — or the same woman, for many women shoot at the traps nowa- days — step up to the score, tuck his gun against his shoulder, brace himself and draw a deep breath, glance down the long length of blued barrels, and call "Pull!" Whizz goes the little black disc, hurtling away at a speed that makes the teal and the mallard seem lazy laggards. One moment of intensely concentrated effort and keen enjoyment till the flying saucer is found just above the forward sight ; an almost in- voluntary sqrf^^'^e of the trigger finger, the thralling jum^ the discharge, and puff! — the clay target is knocked into a thousand bits. 73 Sandhills Sketches That tremendously concentrated effort of finding the speeding disc — you must find Mm quick — he will be quite out of range if you stop to say quickly — followed by the physical climax of the almost simultaneous kick of the gun and the shattering of the clay target ; these are secrets of the witching spell that lures the shooter back and back again to the traps. I must confess to a thoroughly diabolical delight in knocking the clay birds to powder. I do not do it always — not even often, but when I do I enjoy the keenest pleasure. Other trap- shooters confess the same joy. Please, do not say anything about dangerous destruc- tive tendencies that ought to be rigidly sup- pressed, or we shall get into an argument, and then I will have to say a lot of things about quickness of eye, correlation of senses and muscles, and a great deal more that has nothing whatever to do with the sport of shooting the clay birds. Over and above the inherent fascination of knocking the flying clay targets into powder, the fact that there is no closed sea- son on these clay birds and that even a little hand trap in any open field will fur- 74 Sandhills Sketches nish good game anywhere, goes far towards making "the sport alluring" the sport uni- versal. Nor do the changing seasons at all handicap the trap shooter. The clay birds are always full grown and they have no nesting-time ; they are just as plentiful and just as fair sport in November as in May. Indeed, when you mount the trap-shooting hobby-horse, you can make up your mind to settle yourself in the saddle for a long, long gallop over all sorts of country and in all sorts of weather. There seems to be a delicate touch of sar- casm in the fact that the most important winter trap-shooting tournament should be held within a stone's throw of grounds so well stocked with quail that they are chosen for the running of one of the largest field trials. The pick of the blooded setters and pointers are tried out for their bird sense and hunting ability almost within hearing of the guns at the Pinehurst traps. But the quail-hunter and the trap-shooter are brothers in arms. Often, like the Manufac- turer, converted at the Pinehurst traps last winter, they are sporting Siamese twins. The traps furnish good practice to the field 75 Sandhills Sketches shooter and good sport when the closed sea- son would otherwise keep the gun in its ease. There is a curious connection between these brother sports. How keenly, at the traps, does one miss the tramping over the open fields, scrambling up hillsides, fording the streams, hopping over the rail fences! All the tireless quest of the hunt, that strange, primitive, impelling force that de- fies physical fatigue and keeps your high boots swishing through the coarse, knotted crab grass with a long, eager stride from daylight to dark ! Most of all, you miss the dogs. That to me is the great loss. But there is continual shooting to take the place of the joys of the open fields, and there is a cleaner, keener satisfaction in smashing a target than in knocking down a quail; but what takes the place of the dogs? Nothing. Every shooter loves to shoot — if he says he does not, put him down as a hypocrite. No man lugs six or eight or ten or even twelve pounds of shotgun all day long just for the fun of carrying firearms. He likes to shoot. He may — and probably does — thoroughly enjoy the tramp and the pleasure of watch- ing the dogs work, but if he went hunting 76 Sandhills Sketches for these alone lie would not burden Mmself witli a gun. No, the shooter loves to shoot, and at the traps he can shoot till his gun barrels get red hot. Only a lame shoulder and the price of shells need keep him from shooting his head off, as the saying is. To the man who loves action — -quick action and lots of it — this is a charm that the traps surely, and the live birds only uncertainly, offer. But the very kernel of the sport of trap- shooting comes in smashing those flying discs. However keen the hunting instinct there is always just the tinge of regret in blotting out the pretty life of little brown birds There are times when one feels just a bit ashamed of that fierce pleasure of a good, clean, quick shot. At the traps one can let that pleasure run wild. You can grit your teeth and say, "I'm going to paste you this time,'' without qualm of conscience. You can give rein to the passion for destruc- tion without becoming a brute. To do so in the field is to degenerate. We hate the "game hog," not because he is selfish and cruel, but because he is not a man. We need the strong, elemental passions, and we 77 Sandhills Sketches are in danger of becoming super-refined jelly-fishes, incapable of doing wrong be- cause we are incapable of doing good. It takes more courage to attack a lie than to storm a trench, more passion for destruction to root out a bad habit than to raze a city. 78 Through a Jungle to the Old South THE first man to whom we spoke about canoeing down the Lum'bee was not encouraging. The water would be too high for fishing, and what with whirlpools and other dire, vaguely hinted-at dangers he did not reckon we would even get to Lumber- ton, to say nothing of going all the way through to the sea. But our weather-stained mail held forth no inducements to return North to be buffeted about by a blizzard, and our dismal friend^s croakings but seemed to us promises of an exciting trip and strengthened our determination to go — ^to go, we secretly hoped, despite all haz- ard. He proved to be a melancholy deceiver ; we found excite-ment, but not the kind he foretold. The natives know precious little about the Lumbee. Our first confirmation of this was when we discovered that the authority on the river is Dr. John Warren Achom, who has 79 Sandhills Sketches a winter home at Pinebluff. This canoeing enthusiast told us much about the river — that till three years ago, barring the natives' cypress dugouts, the Lumbee had never borne a canoe, and that, while he and others had been down a hundred and eighty miles, no one had ever gone clear through from the headwaters to the sea at Georgetown, S. C. Here was an additional fillip — we were go- ing to blaze the way ! Dr. Achom also ex- tended to us the courtesies of the Mid-Win- ter Canoe Club, and, thanks to him, we used one of the club canoes. He would have fitted us out with a complete kit had we needed it. "It was a misty, moisty morning, and cloudy was the weather," when we pushed off from Blue's Bridge and started down the Lumbee. We, by the way, were two men and two dogs, Leonard Chester Free- man and I, his setter "Belle" and my Scot- tish terrier "Dixie". Snugly stowed away in our sixteen foot canoe were a shelter tent, blankets and ponchos, duffle bags, two shot- guns and a .22 rifle with ammunition, a camera, cooking kit and food supplies for a week ; a two hundred pound outfit, but there are no carrys on the Lumbee. 80 / ft y < f Photo iiv h' A h. ■ i'.LULS iiRilJC.L, i'iNL KLUFF, N. C, FEEDING THE CAPTIVE THE BRAVE LADY'S PORTRAIT Sandhills Sketches Half a dozen strokes and we were round a bend. The little clubhouse under the great pines had vanished. Faintly, through the thickets, Dr. Achorn's cheery voice reached us, calling the Indian's ^^Bon Voyage!'' — "Good hunting !'' Then, save for the swish of the paddles and the buzzing of a couple of precocious dragon-flies all was silent. Apparently, we were miles from civilization. The strange wildness of the Lumbee country strikes you at once. It is all a tangled wil- derness, wild and rampant. There are no stump pastures, such as one meets along the banks of the rivers of the North Woods ; no clearings with a squatty cabin and a field of scraggly corn ; no trace of the hand of man. Except for the friends who pur- sued us in a motor to give us a farewell banquet in, our first night's camp, we saw no human being for eighty miles. Again unlike the northern rivers, the headwaters of the Lumbee do not "chatter over stony ways"; they zigzag, silent and swift, over a bed of white sand. If every river had its own private trade-mark, surely "XXX" would be granted to the Lumbee, for it twists and turns and loops about till beside it the proverbial corkscrew seems to 81 Sandhills Sketches be the shortest distance betwen two points. If you are mathematically inclined, you can calculate the curves from this data : we pad- dled twenty-eight miles from Blue's Bridge to McLeod's Bluff, where we made our first camp, and our friends' speedometer showed they had covered just six miles over the road between these two points. There are no rapids or falls in the upper Lumbee, but the water glides along at a merry rate, scooting round the bends — "cow faces" the natives call them — ^in a way that, till you get just the knack of cutting the corners, is quite disconcerting. Every once in a while, which may mean every three miles or every thirteen, we came to what the natives are pleased to call bluffs, rises of ground that stand, dry and sheltered, a couple of feet above the swirling high water. Between these bluffs the river is literally thankless. The flood flows round and through the trees, a floating forest not a swamp, for there is no marshy ground and few reeds or water grasses. On the entire trip we never slapped at a mosquito or a fly. During the hot summers, this tangled jungle must teem with them, but from Sep- 82 Sandhills Sketches tember to May, though the weather is mild enough, they vanish completely. As it slips quietly to the sea, the Lumbee passes through three distinct phases, each different, each with a charm all its own. During the first stage, the hundred and thirty miles from the headwaters to Lum- berton, the river winds its way through the Sandhills. Here the bottom land is heavily timbered, but it is hard country to lumber, and the woods are almost virgin forest. During the cold weather the swirling high water, and in the summer the noxious ma- laria, have kept the lumberman and his swinging axe out of the Lumbee woods, and the country is a great natural game pre- serve. Giant long-leafed pines dominate the thickets. These great trees shoot straight up fifty or seventy^five feet, their heads crowned by their long needles and huge cones, as the palms are crowned. Beneath are great dark clumps of mountain laurel, glossy bluegums, and tall bushes of bright holly all dotted with scarlet berries. Here and there the strained and twisted branches of a black-jack, that curious dwarf oak that seems to have been racked by some terrible torture, stand stark and bold among the 83 Sandhills Sketches leaves of its fellows, for even in December, tlie Lumbee woods are brigbt and green. What capital places for a snug camp the little bluffs are — dry and sandy, sheltered by tbe evergreens, and stocked with great stores of the best fire-wood in all the world. Those dry pine sticks, saturated with rosin and tar, crackle at a single match's provo- cation into a bright flame. Some of these Lum'bee camps of ours cling in my memory as the most glorious camps I have known. I can hear now the happy gurgle of the river and the swishing whispers of the wind in the pines. The pungent incense of our snap- ping fire, mixed with the fragrance of the pines and damp, cool, woodsy smell of the river bank even now fills my nostrils. From the very first we paddled one at a time, one hour on and one hour off ; and oh, how much more quickly passed the "sab- batical hour," when you lolled in the bow, than the "paddlatical hour" in the stern. This trip ruthlessly destroyed all my faith in copybook maxims about toil making the hours pass quickly. We had left Blue's Bridge but a few mo- ments when we came suddenly upon a great colony of blue herons, giants of the race, 84 Sandhills Sketches standing over five feet. Disturbed at our boorisL. intrusion upon their domestic af- fairs, the great, grey birds flapped labor- iously up from their crude nests in the tree- tops. They rise as painfully as a gouty old man, but once fairly underway they sail gracefully in huge arcs. We grew to know them well before our trip was over, for they and the buzzards are both plentiful. For their beauty they are protected the year round, and the law, for the utilitarian rea- son that they act as public scavengers, is equally kind to the buzzards, who are tame to the point of familiarity. One battered old fellow, whose wings and tail lacked sev- eral feathers, took a keen, morbid interest in us. Soaring just behind us, watching with his wicked, hungry eyes, he followed us all one morning, but he finally convinced himself that we were going to get through all right, and disgusted, he gave up the chase. In the Lumbee woods are many wild tur- keys, and during the fall and early winter, before the water has risen so high, if one has a still paddle, he can often slip round a bend and surprise a stately old gobbler and his hens feeding on the bank. 'Coons 85 Sandhills Sketches and 'possums — African pork — are also plen- tiful. Often a slim brown mink slips sil- ently off a log, and sometimes a lusty otter streaks across the stream, leaving a wake like a miniature powder boat. The middle of the third afternoon, w^hile I dozed in the bow. Freeman shot us through a narrow strip where a fallen tree had all but dammed the stream. As we skinned skilfully betw^een the bank and the branches, a most unmistakably hog-like grunt woke me thoroughly, and Freeman, with a couple of vigorous strokes, brought us about and headed up stream. Several times we had come up with wdld hogs, great porkers who have taken the back-to-nature call too ser- iously. Years ago — no one knows when — they forsook the pen with its three square meals a day to roam the woods in search of uncertain livelihood. Nomadic life has made them lean and gaunt, and armed them with stubby tusks that stick wickedly through their lips. We had some pot shots at these tough customers, but they had al- w^ays rushed away through the flooded woods where pursuit was impossible. We were therefore mightily surprised to find, when Freeman paddled us back, a great 86 Sandhills Sketches three-liundred pounder, black as the ace of spades and ugly as sin, who stood ground on a little ribbon of land between the river and the back waters. Cautiously we ap- proached, I in the bow with gun ready waiting for the splashing rush to cover, Freeman paddling and trying to quiet the dogs who were most forcefully expressing their opinions on the subject of wild hogs. In vain did we wait for the snort and the splashing rush to cover, and, when almost on top of her, we discovered the reason for her determined stand. A volley of wild squeals greeted us. We had found a sow with twelve day-old piggies. I landed, and "Uff er — r — runt !" she bowled at me. I stuck my gun barrel in her face and she stopped, grunting and chopping her short, thick tusks. Freeman, having tied the dogs to the canoe braces, joined me and staved off her bold attacks while I snapped the brave lady's picture. Then, after a deal of maneuvring, we kidnapped one of her off- spring. I managed to get a youngster on a paddle and flipped him like a pancake over to Freeman, who deposited him unceremon- iously in the canoe. Off we pushed, de- 87 Sandhills Sketches lighted witli visions of roast pigling, and tlie old lady gave us a parting rush. Our little piggie was, barring nothing, the most homely beastie ever seen. He was black and shiney, like a shaved and varn- ished puppy, with a big, shapeless wedge of a head, topped off with enormous, flappy ears. He squealed, and squawked, and snorted, and grunted in every key, and every waking minute he kept up his racket. But his comical antics and unfailing good nature won our hearts. We did not enjoy roast pig, and since he did not prove to be a good canoeist, we sold him, three days later, for the munificent sum of "two bits." His new owner carried him off to join him to a fam- ily of tame pigs in his pens. Just above Alma (Alma is a puffing saw mill surrounded by dirty, dilapidated negro shacks) , we passed under Gilchrist^s Bridge, where Sherman's army, marching north after taking Charleston, crossed the river. Just below Alma is the reservation of the Croatan Indians, the mysterious blue-eyed race descended, so it is said, from Sir Walter Ealeigh's Lost Colony, which was planted on Roanoke Island in 1587 and disappeared as completely as if swallowed by the earth. 88 ■ft ' ^ .- • 5- A PEE DEE PLANTATION ■DRAM TREES" INDIGO MAKERS HALL, GEORGETOWN, S. C. Sandhills Sketches We met several of these Indians — short, thick-set fellows with yellow skins and wide- set, blue eyes — ^and found them so engrossed in planting cotton that it was hard to be- lieve they were for years a thorn in the side of the Grovernment and the army. Nearing Lumberton, a busy little town with an attractive Confederate Monument, all strangely like a New England village with its shaft "To our Soldiers and Sailors,'^ the country began to change. We were leav- ing the long-leafed pines of the Sandhills. Cypress became more and more common, and occasionally we spied a bunch of Span- ish moss swaying in the branches overhead. Just above Lumberton the river twists it- self all into knots and then straightens out, so the last couple of miles into the town are straight as a canal, between banks that rise steeply from each side of the swift, deep stream. We created a sensation in Lumberton. Khaki clad, in flannel shirts, much in need of the barber^s services, traveling in a strange craft whose frailty aroused great admiration of our supposed courage, and accompanied by two dogs and a young wild pig — ^it is small wonder we disembarked 89 Sandhills Sketches amid a crowd tliat thouglit we were crazy, but was too polite to say so. The sole and only hotel, so we discovered, had been torn down to make room for a bank, but w^e found a genial savior in an energetic gentle- man who combines the various duties of proprietor of the movies, political boss, re- porter for the local paper, and last, but not least, husband of the landlady of "th' best eatin'-house in town.'' Here we could eat, and our factotum found us a place to sleep with one of his neighbors. Below Lumberton, which we left next morning after stocking our larder and pur- chasing a nursing-bottle for piggie, we came fairly to the second stage of the river. The woods of the Sandhills had vanished; we were in a semi-tropical jungle. Bottle-neck cypress rose, like the columns of a catherdal, right out of the water. When they rise in mid-stream, the lumbermen recognize such a phenomenon of Nature by calling them "dram trees" and claiming a drink when the logs are safely by. There are parts of the river where, if this jovial custom is strictly followed, it must take a remarkably hard head to bring the lumher to the mill. The undergrowth is a tangle of giant ferns and 90 Sandhills Sketches cactus-like palms, all snarled up with twin- ing creepers. Overhead every crotch in the trees is a jardiniere of ferns, and every branch is coated with lichens, and festooned with Spanish moss and vines. Here is fas- cinating canoeing. The current slips along merrily between the banks, and one can whirl along almost without dipping the paddle in the water. In other places, the water sprawls out through the cypress jun- Igle and there is no more current than in a bath-tub. Chattering black birds in whole colonies scolded us roundly ; red and yellow wood-peckers played tag up and down the tree trunks; scarlet tanagers and sapphire kingfishers darted down the stream before us, while humming-birds, like great be- jewelled moths, hovered about our canoe. The trees had burst into leaf as if by magic, and the delicate greens of their new foliage made a delightful setting against which to show off the brilliant colors of the bright birds. We had canoed right into the heart of Fairyland at the first of a glorious spring. Who would believe that it was the first of March and that a blizzard was throttling the North? Soon we left this Fairyland and came to 91 Sandhills Sketches the great Buzzard Flats, the stillest, weird- est waters one ever canoed. After thread- ing our waj between the decaying bastions of the Old State Line Bridge, once a famous thoroughfare, now but a mark to tell the lumbermen they have passed from North to South Carolina, we had slipped with the Lumbee into the waters of the Little Pee Dee. They slide together these two great rivers and except that the banks are now a hundred yards from side to side one would hardly know the change. But it is different when the Little Pee Dee joins the Great Pee Dee. Here the rush of the big river's muddy floods backs up the slower waters of the smaller river. They sprawl over the flat country into a great labyrinth of lakes and lagoons, the famous Buzzard Flats of the Pee Dee. It was a cool, still, grey after- noon when we paddled through this strange place. The sky stretched steely grey above us, and on all sides the still water reached away like great sheets of ground glass. The great, grey cypress, all hung with grey Spanish moss, rose in straight colonnades. Save for the swish-swish of the paddles and the clunk-a-plunk of innumerable turtles which dropped dully into the water at our 92 8a?idhills Sketches coining, all was still as the tomb. Even the birds added to the eerie spell ; big blue heron swinging in lazy circles ; grey cranes streak- ing across the sky; buzzards hanging all but motionless far overhead ; and owls bolt- ing away in their senseless flight. But with all their witching spell these Flats are a capital place in which to get lo-st. Forewarned, we kept to the right when in doubt, for the Great Pee Dee comes in on the right side. All afternoon we pad- dled 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 pros- pect 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, 93 Sandhills Sketches 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 draTVTL against the pink, western sky, and be lost in the hazy distance over the Buz- zard Flats. We were too late for duck shooting, but just in time for the run of spring shad, and we drifted by two row- boats 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. To- morrow 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 threat- ened to soon tire of being overloaded with bulging cotton bales, and drop quietly to 94: Sandhills Sketches the river bottom. We made a late start, and slipped reluctantly by tbe 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 pre- served 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 Bwamp 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 plan- tations, accounted the most valuable land in the South and supporting the flower of southern chivalry. The Civil War laid 95 Sandhills Sketches waste this gardenland, but the rice ena;bled it to regain a shadow of its former great- ness, 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.