An act, passed in 1696, making all aliens, THEN inhabitants, free --enabling them to hold lands and to claim the same as heirs --according liberty of conscience to all Christians (except Papists), &c. --placed our refugees on a footing of equality with the rest of the inhabitants, and put an end to the old hostilities between them.
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When our traveller turned his back upon this "kind, loving, and affable people," to pursue his journey into North Carolina, his first forward step was into a howling wilderness.
The Santee settlement, though but forty miles distant from Charleston, was a frontier -- all beyond was waste, thicket and forest, filled with unknown and fearful animals, and "sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful," --which the footstep of man dreaded to disturb. Of the wild beasts by which it was tenanted, a single further extract from the journal of Mr. Lawson will give us a sufficient and striking idea. He has left the Santee settlements but a single day -- probably not more than fifteen miles.
His Indian companion has made for his supper a bountiful provision, having killed three fat turkeys in the space of half an hour.
"When we were all asleep," says our traveller, "in the beginning of the night, we were awakened with the dismallest and most hideous noise that ever pierced my ears. This sudden surprisal incapacitated us of guessing what this threatening noise might proceed from; but our Indian pilot (who knew these parts very well) acquainted us that it was customary to hear such musick along that swamp-side, there being endless numbers of panthers, tygers, wolves, and other beasts of prey, which take this swamp for their abode in the day, coming in whole droves to hunt the deer in the night, making this frightful ditty till day appears, then all is still as in other places." (Page 26.)Less noisy, except in battle, but even more fearful, were the half-human possessors of the same regions, the savages, who, at that period, in almost countless tribes or families, hovered around the habitations of the European. Always restless, commonly treacherous, warring or preparing for war, the red men required of the white borderer the vigilance of an instinct which was never to be allowed repose.
This furnished an additional school for the moral and physical training of our young Huguenots. In this school, without question, the swamp and forest partisans of a future day took some of their first and most valuable lessons in war. Here they learned to be watchful and circumspect, cool in danger, steady in advance, heedful of every movement of the foe, and -- which is of the very last importance in such a country and in such a warfare as it indicates --happily dextrous in emergencies to seize upon the momentary casualty, the sudden chance -- to convert the most trivial circumstance, the most ordinary agent, into a means of extrication or offence.
It was in this last respect particularly, in being quick to see, and prompt to avail themselves of the happy chance or instrument, that the partisans of the revolution in the southern colonies, under Marion and others, asserted their vast superiority over the invader, and maintained their ground, and obtained their final triumph, in spite of every inequality of arms and numbers.
