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The snore of grist-mills, the rasp of mill-saws, the flow of pine-colored breast-water into the gorge of the village, the forest cypress-trees impudently intruding into the obliquely-radiating streets, and humidity of ivy and creeper over many of the old, gable-chimneyed houses, the long lumber-yards reflected in the swampy harbor among the canoes, pungies, and sharpies moored there, the small houses sidewise to the sandy streets, the larger ones rising up the sandy hills, the old box-bush in the silvery gardens, the bridges close together, and the smell of tar and sawdust pleasantly inhaled upon the lungs, made a combination like a caravan around some pool in the Desert of the Nile.

To insure the efficiency of mill-saws, it is highly important to have them firmly secured in the frames by which they are reciprocated.

Their swords were beaten out of old mill-saws at the country forge, and their bullets were made largely from pewter mugs and other pewter utensils. Their rations were very scant and simple. Marion, their leader, as a rule, ate hominy and potatoes and drank water flavored with a little vinegar. The story is told that one day a British officer came to the camp with a flag of truce.

The militia who had been captured with the city regarded themselves as absolved from a parole which did not protect them from enlistment in the ranks of the Crown, and the irregular bands of Marion, Pickens and Sumter received large accessions. Mill-saws were roughly forged into sabres and pewter table-ware melted and beaten into slugs for the shot-guns with which the men were armed.