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Then we came to what is called a "pine-barren;" the ground being flat and the soil of a sandy nature, out of which rose enormous tall pines, having beneath them a growth of rank grass, and here and there clumps of low bushes, well calculated to conceal an enemy, while our course was often impeded by fallen trunks and half-burned stumps.
We five travellers had been for some time making our way eastward in as direct a course as we could steer by compass across a pine-barren. The ground was as level as a floor. Now and then a rivulet appeared, from which we quenched our thirst; while the magnolias and other flowering plants on its banks relieved the dull uniformity of the woods.
In vain I looked out for my companions; no signs of them could I discover, though I climbed to the highest part of the tree, nor could I anywhere see the smoke of their fire. It was already past noon, when I caught sight of a solitary deer making its way across the open pine-barren. One of the wolves must have seen it too, for the brute, giving a peculiar cry, set off, followed by the whole pack.
Our footsteps showed us the direction whence we had come, and we hoped that we had been directing our course eastward. As we marched on through the midst of a wide-extending pine-barren, eagerly looking out for water, we allayed our burning thirst by sucking some leaves which still retained the moisture precipitated on them during the night.
They did not know who or where their assailants might be, and the fall of the man beside me created a hasty rumor that I was killed, so that it was on the whole an alarming experience for them. They kept together very tolerably, however, while our assailants, dividing, rode along on each side through the open pine-barren, firing into our ranks, but mostly over the heads of the men.
Shortly afterwards, we entered a pine-barren, or, rather, I might call it a pine-forest, through which we struck on a well-defined track, the grass on either side being so tall that we could scarcely see over it. We had been going on for several hours, when we suddenly found ourselves in a more open space.
Still, I hoped, by proceeding across the pine-barren, that I should in time see the light of their fire. I, accordingly, shouldering my load of meat, set off. The night became unusually dark, and it was with difficulty that I avoided stumbling over fallen trunks or running against the stumps of trees. I occasionally shouted, and several times fired off my rifle.
The statistics of the Georgetown and Beaufort districts, which comprised the rest of the South Carolina coast, show a like analysis except for a somewhat larger proportion of non-slaveholders and very small slaveholders, who were, of course, located mostly in the towns and on the sandy stretches of pine-barren. The detailed returns for Georgia in that census have been lost.
When morning came we found ourselves running northwest through a poor, pine-barren country that strongly resembled that we had traversed in coming to Savannah. The more we looked at it the more familiar it became, and soon there was no doubt we were going back to Andersonville. By noon we had reached Millen eighty miles from Savannah, and fifty-three from Augusta.
It was toward the end of February; a clear afternoon drawing toward sunset; and all the flat, sad country was covered with a drifting red glow that turned the field of broom-grass into a sea of gold; that lighted up the black wall of pine-barren, and shot, here and there, long shafts of light into the sombre depths of the cypress swamp.
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