Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/143

1866.] others. It was of loose texture, and, instead of being pear-shaped, was hemispherical in form, and attached by its flat surface to the lower side of a leaf. This also contained young spiders, a little larger and a little brighter in color than the others, but really bearing no resemblance to the full-grown spiders of Long Island. This single cocoon formed the entering wedge of doubt, and soon it was clear that the only means of proof lay on Long Island itself.

But how was this to be reached? Easily enough while we were upon Folly Island and could row through the creeks to a wharf on the east side of Long Island. But now the case was altered; for between James and Long Islands was the immense marsh already mentioned, intersected by creeks, and composed of mud practically without bottom, and ranging from eighteen to twenty-three feet in depth by actual measurement. Around or over or through this marsh it was necessary to go, in order to reach Long Island, the home of the spiders.

I could easily occupy the rest of my allotted space in recounting my various attempts to reach this El Dorado, which my fancy, excited by every delay, stocked with innumerable cocoons of the kind already found so abundantly on James Island. These I expected would furnish thousands of spiders, the care of which, with the reeling of their silk, would give employment to all the freed people in South Carolina,—for even then the poor creatures were finding their way to the coast. And perhaps, I thought, some day, the Sea-Island silk may be as famous as the choice Sea-Island cotton. This hope I still cherish, together with the belief that, under certain conditions, the spiders may also be reared at the North.

After riding miles and miles in all directions in search of the readiest point of attack; after having once engaged a row-boat to go around through Stono River and meet me at the nearest point of land,—on which occasion I dismounted to give my horse a better chance of getting over a bad place in the road, and the ungrateful beast left me in the lurch and went home much faster than he came, while I, being now half-way, walked on through the marsh, and had the pleasure of sitting on a log in a pouring rain for an hour, with Long Island just on the other side of a creek over which no boat came to carry me,—after this and other disappointments, I at last made sure by going in the boat myself, and so finally reached the island. But now, to my discomfiture, after a most careful search, I saw only two or three cocoons of the kind I looked for, while the others, of loose texture, were quite abundant, and doubtless would have been found in still greater numbers but for their always being under leaves, and often at a considerable height. It was probable now that these latter cocoons contained the spiders, and that the former were a different species.

The regiment now removed to the interior of the State, and while there occurred the coup de soleil above mentioned. We remained at Orangeburg until the middle of August, and then, being stationed at Mt. Pleasant, I again made raids for spiders. Upon James Island, in the localities where during the spring the cocoons were abundant, I found many large geometrical spiders, all of one kind, but not of the kind I sought. They were bad-tempered, and their legs were so short and strong that it was not easy to handle them, while their silk was of a light, and not brilliant, yellow.

My first attempt upon Long Island was made by leaving Charleston in a boat, which, after touching at Sumter, landed me at Fort Johnson. Here I was joined by a sergeant and corporal of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, and we walked across to a little settlement of freed people not far from Secessionville, where a boat and crew were engaged. It would be tedious to relate how, after sticking on invisible oyster-beds and mud-flats, and losing our way among the creeks, at two o'clock we found ourselves about one hundred