Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Nature Magazine: Carolina number

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-10367.jpg
25 / 78
Item
  • Carolina have recorded their delight in the smiling landscape, the abundance of wild life and the multitude and infinite variety of fruits and flowers. One of the earliest accounts is that of the Hilton expedition that sailed from the Barbados in 1663 to mark out likely places for settlement. It explored the coast line and rivers from what is now Beaufort, South Carolina, to Cape Fear in North Carolina. Describing the lands "about Port-Royal, the River Jordan or Combeheh and the River of Edistow" one reads in quaint diction of the day: "The lands are laden with large tall oaks, Walnutt, and Bayes, except facing the Sea it is most Pines, tall and very good; the land, save where the Pines grow, is a good Soyle, covered with a black Mold, in some places a foot, in some places half a foot, and we think may produce anything as well as most parts of the Indies that we have seen. The Indians plant the worst lands because they cannot cut down the great timber in the best, and yet have plenty of Corn, Pumpions, Water Mellons, Musk-mellons; although the land be overgrown with weeds through their laziness, they have three crops of corn a year. The countrey abounds with large Grapes, Figs and Peaches; the woods with Deer, Conies, Turkeys, Quail, Curlues, Plovers, Teile, Herons; and the Indians say in winter with Swans, Geese, Cranes, Duck and Mallard, and inumerable of other waterfowls, whose names we know not; Oysters in abundance, with great store of Muscles. A sort of fair Crabs, and a round Shel-fish called Horse-feet; the Rivers stored plentifully with fish that we saw play and leap. There are great Marshes with a root that the Indians make bread of. "The Ayr is clear and sweet, the countrey very pleasant and delightful; and we could wish that all they that want a happy settlement, of our English Nation, were we transported thither." Writing about a century and a half later, Ramsey, the historian of South Carolina, mentions among the varieties of wild life then existing the bear, panther, wild cat, wolf, beaver, gray fox, red deer, otter, black and gray squirrel, rabbit, opossum, raccoon, mink. Checking this list today only wolf and beaver may not be found in forest or river-swamp. Of the ninety-three birds listed by Ramsey as then native to Carolina only two are extinct, the "Carolina Perroquet" and the wild pigeon. Ill Natural environment inevitably influences human development. Because of gentle, alluring climate the people of Carolina have always been devoted to outdoor sports and recreations and keen observers of Nature, because of the luxuriance of flowers and the poetic loveliness of stream and forest they have ever been people attuned to music, poetry and art. Along the Carolina coast, wistful tidal streams framed in cypress, live- oak and Spanish moss retain such liquid names as Wadmalaw, Santee, Ashepoo, Chee-ha, Combahee. In the Carolina mountains the Indians gave the clear, happy brooks such love names as Talulla, leaping waters; Toccoah, sparkling waters; Nantahula, noonday river; Cheesquaneeta, little bird. Azure peaks and ranges, where these streams are born amid cool, fern-hidden rocks, rejoiced in the music of such names as Sunnalee— morning—and Senoyah—darkness—and, for The Smoky Mountains, Chesseetoah, meaning place of rabbits. Surely from the beginning this land has been (Continued on page 350) Our artist did not go beyond the present in his sketches, but we venture to predict a rich future for these Carolinas—a future wherein their wealth of beauty, their abundant wild life and their natural resources will be appreciated even more deeply than at present both by Carolinians and by the American people, who are rapidly discovering them. AND THE ARISTOCRACY J9IOF THE OLD SOUTH. GREAT NATURALISTS 1 .HAVE CAVORTED A 22 CENTURY & A HALF MODERN FARMING METHODS AND DIVERSIFICATION NATIONAL PARK, 4 ■ EXTENSIVE NEW 27| FORtSTjRECREATiqNg^HIGHWAV PROGRAM EMENDOUS INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION 301
Object