Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 1 (1869).djvu/22

Rh 'In the summer of 1827, we again went to Sullivan's Island. It was a pleasant time, especially as we now had our father with us. We lived in a large rambling house, with a pleasant verandah in which we had a swing, and a large garden fenced in with a hedge of yuccas, called there Spanish bayonets. The house had once been an inn, and was built in two parts. My father and mother slept in a room over a great only reached by an open staircase or by a little open path across a roof; and when great storms arose, as often happened, my father used to carry us in his arms, back over the open space into the more protected part of the house.

'The walks on the sand were delightful to us children. It was the finest white soft sand without a vestige of shingle on which we used to play; and I remember that Arthur even then was too fastidious to take off his shoes and stockings and paddle about as we did. The whole island was like a great sandbank, with little growing naturally on it but a few palmettos and low woods of myrtle. Our walks along the sea often took us as far as Fort Moultrie, which in our time was a red brick fort with a dry ditch round it, without the earthworks which have since become famous. A high bank of sand lay between it and the sea; and, after crossing this, we came to a few desolate houses half buried in sand, which here lay in great heaps. Here and there grew a few palmettos, which the high tides or autumn storms too often carried away, and when we came to look for a favourite tree, to our great grief, we found it gone. These sands were the haunt of innumerable curlews whose wild screams seemed to make the shore more lonely still. A beautiful grove of myrtles rose farther along the shore.

'The other end of the island was the inhabited part. There was the pier busy with its arrivals and departures of steamers, and sailing boats going to and fro between the island and the city, and covered with numerous carriages, gigs