The Beaufort District is not invested with any considerable Revolutionary romance. In 1779, the British forces holding Savannah sent two hundred troops with a howitzer and two field-pieces to Beaufort. Four companies of militia from Charleston with two field-pieces, reinforced by a few volunteers from Beaufort, repulsed and drove them off. The British made marauding incursions from Charleston in 1782, and are said to have levied a military contribution on St. Helena and Port Royal Islands. There are the remains of Indian mounds and ancient forts on the islands. One of these last, it is said, can be traced on Paris Island, and is claimed by some antiquaries to be the Charles Fort built by Ribault. There are the well-preserved walls of one upon the plantation of John J. Smith on Port Royal Island, a few miles south of Beaufort, now called Camp Saxton, and recently occupied by Colonel Higginson's regiment. It is built of cemented oyster-shells. Common remark refers to it as a Spanish fort, but it is likely to be of English construction. The site of Charles Fort is claimed for Beaufort, Lemon Island, Paris Island, and other points. The Sea Islands are formed by the intersection of the creeks and arms of the sea. They have a uniform level, are without any stones, and present a rather monotonous and uninteresting scenery, spite of the raptures of French explorers. The creeks run up into the islands at numerous points, affording facilities for transportation by flats and boats to the buildings which are usually near them. The soil is of a light, sandy mould, and yields in the best seasons a very moderate crop, say fifteen bushels of corn and one hundred or one hundred and thirty pounds of ginned cotton to the acre,--quite different from the plantations in Mississippi and Texas, where an acre produces five or six hundred pounds. The soil is not rich enough for the cultivated grasses, and one finds but little turf. The coarse saline grasses, gathered in stacks, furnish the chief material for manure. The long-fibred cotton peculiar to the region is the result of the climate, which is affected by the action of the salt water upon the atmosphere by means of the creeks which permeate the land in all directions. The seed of this cotton, planted on the upland, will produce in a few years the cotton of coarser texture; and the seed of the latter, planted on the islands, will in a like period produce the finer staple. The Treasury Department secured eleven hundred thousand pounds from the islands occupied by our forces, including Edisto, being the crop, mostly unginned, and gathered in storehouses, when our military occupation began.