Four Months in a Sneak-Box: A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of MexicoBishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes)
General
Four Months in a Sneak-Box: A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico
Bishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes)
Boats and boating; Mississippi River -- Description and travel; Ohio River -- Description and travel
We made a hasty Sunday breakfast of cornstarch, and pulled down the
creek, anxious to put some distance between ourselves and the doctor.
Four miles down the stream, where it debouched into West Bay, we found
the homes of two settlers. The one living on the right bank was the
man who had given Mr. Holly his stiff arm, the other had built himself
a rude but comfortable cabin on the opposite shore. Though there was
one delicate-looking woman only in this cabin, without any protector,
she hospitably asked us to make our camp at her landing, adding, that
when her husband returned from the woods she might be able to give us
some meat.
Soon a dog came out of the dense forest, followed by a man who bore
upon his shoulders the hind-quarters of a deer which he had killed. He
bade us welcome, while he remarked that there were no Sundays in these
parts, where one day was just like another; and then presenting us
with half his venison, regretted that he had not been aware of our
arrival, as he could have killed another deer, his dog having started
fifteen during a short ramble in the woods. In the thickets of "ti-
ti," which are almost as dense as cane-brakes, the deer, panthers, and
bears take refuge; and in this great wilderness of St. Andrew's Bay
expert hunters can find venison almost any day.
On Monday morning we rowed through West Bay, across the southern end
of North Bay, and skirted the north coast of the East Bay of St.
Andrew's, with its picturesque groves of cabbage-palms, for a few
miles, when we turned southward into the inlet through which the tidal
waters of the Gulf pass in and out of the sound.
We were now close to the sea, with a few narrow sandy islands only
intervening between us and the Gulf of Mexico, and upon these ocean
barriers we found breezy camping-grounds. Our course was by the open
sea for six or eight miles, when we reached a narrow beach
thoroughfare, called Crooked Island Bay, through which we rowed, with
Crooked Island on our right hand, until we arrived at the head of the
bay, where we expected to find an outlet to the sea. Being overtaken
by darkness, we staked our boats on the quiet sheet of water, and at
sunrise pushed on to find the opening through the beach. Not a sign of
human life had been seen since we had left the western end of the East
Bay of St. Andrew's Sound, and we now discovered that no outlet to the
sea existed, and that Crooked Island was not an island, but a long
strip of beach land which was joined to the main coast by a narrow
neck of sandy territory, and that the interior watercourse ended in a
creek.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account