Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/11



This book is not history. It is romance. But the inlets of Edisto harboured many a pirate in the old days; the traders' caravans travelled the Great Wilderness Path from Charles Town to the mountain kingdom of the Cherokees; there were wilderness hunters whose long rifles seldom missed, and pedagogues who were as clever with their swords as with their pens. On sea and land there were battles and flights and duels and ambuscades. There were girls who were beautiful and brave; and there was a young chief of the Muskogee Confederacy who knew his Homer and Horace and doubtless The Faerie Queene—a chief who had in his veins the blood of France and Scotland and the ancient Family of the Wind. The golden spiders still spin their shining webs at "Stanwicke Hall." The egrets still whiten the trees in Great Santee. Sani'gilagi is still a noble mountain, though this, its true name, is forgotten. The time-stained books of the old chroniclers paint a marvellous wilderness, as marvellous as that which is pictured here.