The forayers Volume 3; or, The raid of the dog-days

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 Excerpt: ...side; but, we may add, that, as in all snch cases, there were baser motives also at work; there were private feuds to avenge, hot rivalries to assuage, and plunder to be won. It may be that the progress of our history will unfold all of these motives in turn. There is a small watercourse, buried in swamp and thickly fringed with a natural and noble forest-growth, which, rising at nearly equal distances between the Santee and the Edisto, finds its way at last into the latter river. This stream goes still by the old rustic title of the Four-Holes swamp. In the times of which we write, it was one of the places of refuge for the outlying patriot. The settlements along its upland margin were infrequent; and, though skirted by one of the common thoroughfares of the county, the region was of too suspicious a character to suffer the traveller to linger as he rode. There was nothing to woo the lover of the picturesque in the prospect around him, and curiosity had but little motive to pierce the dark and silent recesses of those thickets which seemed impenetrable from without; and the mysterious stillness and obscurity of which, were well calculated to arm the instincts of the wayfarer with a tremulous sense of danger. He rarely suffered himself or his steed to pause and bait as he sped over the route, so long as tho gloomy shadows of this great thicket were cast upon his path. It is to this very region, however, that we propose to conduct the reader now. We shall penetrate the silent and shadowy fortress of swamp and forest, following a footpath which you would scarcely discover for yourself; the traces of which, from without, are quite undiscernible by the uninitiated. We enter a creek, breaking boldly through a fence of willows. Our steeds leave no track in the wa...