of cane-the latter often stretching in unbroken lines of evergreen for hundreds of miles from the alluvial country on the coast to the interior sources of streams, says Logan-it was not surpassed in picturesque beauty and grandeur by the best portions of Texas; and its virgin soil was not inferior to that of the same boasted state. When the hunters and cow drivers. first penetrated this region there were considerable portions of it as destitute of trees and as luxuriant in grass and flower as any prairie of modern times. Through this country the Catawbas and the Cherokees roamed. It abounded in wild horses, buffaloes, bears, deer, elk, panthers, and other wild animals.

A country, says the same author, then abounding in magnificent woods and prairies and so rich in its production of animal life, must have offered, as do similar regions of the West at the present day, rare attractions to the hunter and stockraiser; and if all information on the subject had been wholly lost, it would not be difficult to conjecture what sort of men first ventured to penetrate its unexplored wilds.

Three remarkable classes of men preceded by several years the regular settlers of northwestern Carolina; these were the hunters, cow drivers, and Indian traders. The hunter, though no pioneer—for he appropriated no lands, levelled no forests, and cultivated but little soil-yet served by his adventurous life many valuable purposes; he conciliated the jealous savages, impressed them, as Indians were easily impressed, by his romantic courage and unrivalled skill in the use of the rifle, with sentiments of respect for the character and prowess of white men, and brought back from his wanderings to the border settlements glowing accounts of Elysian fields he had seen in the wilderness, and thus opened the way to the most eligible sections for succeeding groups of advancing settlers. Thus Logan relates that Patrick and William Calhoun, the pioneers of western Abbeville, were induced to visit the Long Canes by descriptions of the fertility and loveliness of the country there which they had obtained from a band of hunters at the Waxhaws.

Not far from the log hut of the hunter stood that of the cow driver-a character likewise worthy of note. Besides his association with the Indians and these gloomy wilds, there was little romance about him; yet his life was one of self-reliance, hardship, and active vigilance, and in it were trained for emi

nent usefulness many of the backwoods soldiers of the Revolution. Logan mentions General Andrew Williamson of White Hall as one that had been a cow driver in his youth on the Cane Pastures, and that in 1740 Thomas Nightingale, the maternal ancestor of the Johnsons of Charlestown, had established a cow pen six miles from the present site of Winnsboro. A cow pen was quite an important institution. It was usually officered with a superintendent and a corps of sub-agents—all active men, experienced woodsmen, and unfailing shots at long or short sight with the rifle. For these a hamlet of cabins was erected beside the large enclosures for the stock, all of which, with a considerable plot of cleared land in the vicinity for the cultivation of corn, made quite an opening in the woods; and when all were at home, and the cattle in the pens, presented a very noisy, civilized scene in the midst of the savage wilderness. These rude establishments became afterward, wherever they were found, the centres of settlements, founded by the cultivators of the soil, who followed just behind the cow drivers in their enterprising search for unappropriated productive lands. These embryo settlements never failed to afford abundant possessions, some society, and sure protection from the Indians and from the no less terrible white marauders who now began to infest the border.

But the Indian trader, says Logan, was a far more interesting character than either the hunter or the cow driver. Devoted as he was to the arts and wrangle of gain, he nevertheless possessed not only a fearless intrepidity, but a high order of intelligence, and in more than one instance education and learning. He advanced without ceremony into the heart of Indian settlements, and for the sake of pushing his lucrative business was content to live in many instances, a long lifetime deprived of the comforts and amenities of civilized society. Anthony Park, one of the first settlers of the back country, and who lived to a very advanced age in Newberry, travelled in 1758 some hundred miles among the Indians to the west of the Alleghany Mountains. He found several white men, chiefly Scotch or Irish, who said they had lived among the Indians as traders twenty years, a few from forty to fifty, and one sixty years. One of these said he had upward of seventy children and grandchildren in the Nation. If these ac

counts be correct, says Logan, the oldest of these traders must have taken up his abode among the savages four hundred miles to the west of Charlestown before the close of the Seventeenth Century, when the white population of Carolina scarcely extended twenty miles from the sea coast. In 1690, several years before the English settlers on the Ashley knew that such a people as the Cherokees existed, one Daugherty, a trader from Virginia, ventured to take up his residence among them for the purpose of traffic.

The Indian trade, until 1716, was conducted solely under the auspices of individual enterprise. The system of exchange was exceedingly advantageous to the English adventurer; for a few trinkets, looking-glasses, pieces of colored cloth, hatchets, and guns of small value, he could procure, on the Savannah and Catawba, peltries which in Charlestown would command many times their original cost. But in that year, partly for the sake of its enormous profits, and partly with the design of having better control of the Indians in view of the public safety, the Proprietary Government assumed the direction of all its affairs, and conducted it thereafter as a great public monopoly.

Next to the traders, says Logan, the most interesting characters employed in the Indian traffic were the pack-horsemen. These frequently consisted in part of boys, under the direction of an experienced voyageur, and their life was one of exposure, hardship, and not unfrequently of thrilling adventures. In peace and in war, in every vicissitude of weather, they were found upon the path. When menaced, it was usual for several caravans to unite for mutual protection; yet they were not unfrequently attacked, the drivers and traders murdered or routed, and their horses and goods seized by the marauders.

THE BATTLE OF FORT MOULTRIE

From 'History of South Carolina.' Copyright, The Macmillan Company, and used here by permission of the publishers.

THE fire of the fort was principally directed at the Bristol and Experiment, carrying each fifty guns, and they suffered most incredibly. The first was the flagship on board of which was Sir Peter Parker and with him Lord William Campbell, who had volunteered his service and was complimented with the command of her lower deck. Sir Peter received two wounds, but gallantly remained at his post, encouraging his men and reënforcing his ship from other vessels. Lord William Campbell received a wound in his side, which was at first reported to be not of a serious character, but from the effects of which he ultimately died. Early in the action the Bristol had the spring of her cable shot away, which caused her to lie end on to the battery, and was raked fore and aft. She lost upwards of one hundred men killed and wounded. Captain Morris received a number of wounds, but with noble obstinacy disdained to quit his post until his arm was shot off; he died a week after. Perhaps, it was said, another instance of such slaughter could not be produced; twice the quarterdeck was cleared of every person except Sir Peter, and he was wounded. The vessel had nine shots in her mainmast, which was so much damaged as to be obliged to be shortened; the mizzenmast had seven thirty-two-pounders, and had to be cut away. The day was very sultry with a burning sun, the wind very light, and the water consequently smooth. But for this it is probable the Bristol could not have been kept from filling, as she was hulled in many places and otherwise so damaged that the carpenters of the squadron were called to her for assistance while the battle raged in all its fury. The Experiment suffered almost as much as the Bristol. Captain Scott, her commander, like Captain Morris, lost his right arm, and was otherwise so badly wounded that his life, too, was at first despaired of. The number killed and wounded on the Experiment was about the same as upon the Bristol. All the while the battle raged barges were passing from one ship to the other and to and from the transports, removing wounded and bringing fresh men as occasion required. So great was the slaughter on board these two

ships that a remonstrance was made to Sir Peter Parker that if the fire from the fort continued, the two ships and their arms would be entirely destroyed; indeed, their abandonment was in contemplation when the fire from the fort slackened from want of powder.

The fort, on the other hand, had not escaped with impunity. Three or four of the fleet's broadsides striking the merlons at the same moment shook the slight work to its foundation, and it was apprehended that a few more would realize Lee's predictions and tumble the whole fabric down. Owing, however, to the peculiar character of the palmetto logs of which the fort was built, comparatively little damage was done, save in the concussion and shaking of the framework. Though the ships which were to have gained position at the cove failed to do so, yet even from the position the ships had reached the southwestern curtain of the fort was so enfiladed and the guns were so often struck that it was apparent that had they reached that point, unless beaten off by the batteries at Haddrell's Point at long range, the fort in all probability would have proved the slaughter pen Lee had predicted. Soon after the action began the three twelve-pounders which were in the cavalier or interior bastion were abandoned, the works not being sufficiently high to protect the men who manned them.

The flagstaff of the fort was shot away some time after and fell with the flag outside the fort. Upon this Sergeant Jasper of the Grenadiers of the Second Regiment leaped down from one of the embrasures, and tearing the flag from the staff returned with it through a heavy fire from the shipping, and fixing it upon a sponge staff planted it once more on the summit of the merlon amidst a rain of shot and shell; then giving three cheers returned to his gun, which he continued to serve throughout the engagement. While the battle was raging General Lee dispatched a letter by one of his aides, ordering Colonel Moultrie if he should expend his ammunition without beating off the enemy to spike his guns and retreat with all order possible. Colonel Moultrie was thus placed in a most embarrassing position.

If he exhausted his ammunition, he was to desert the fort and thereby to permit Colonel Thomson at the extreme end