A geographical description of these outlying islands of South Carolina is hardly necessary at a time when we are studying the map of the republic under the guidance of bayonets and rifled cannon; and the guns of Admiral Du Pont revealed more of Port Royal and its surroundings than we should ever have learned from our geographies. Previous to the rebellion these islands seem to have been rarely visited--so rarely, indeed, that the presence of one of our naval vessels in the Beaufort river, a few years ago, was the signal for a week's festivities and a general gathering of all the inhabitants to see the strangers--while the 'cotton lords' vied with each other in entertaining the distinguished guests. For the most part the islands are low, abounding in salt-water creeks and marshes, and covered, here and there, with forests of pine and live oak. The climate in winter is delightful, and the rapid advance of vegetation in March and April--the sudden bursting into bloom of a great variety of flowers and flowering shrubs--lends additional charms to the early spring. Sitting, on one of those delicious April days, in the upper piazza of an old plantation house--the eye resting on the long stretch of the cotton fields, now green with the growing plant--or tracing the windings of the creek through the numerous small islands, till it is lost in the haze which covers all the distance--or, again, watching the shadows as they pass over the groves of oak and pine--while over the whole scene there broods the stillness of a midsummer's noon--I could but wonder at the madness which had driven the former dwellers in such a fair land into the desperate hazards and unaccustomed privations of civil war.