Monday evening I rowed over to Darien with Mr. ---- to fetch over the
doctor, who was coming to visit some of our people. As I sat waiting in
the boat for the return of the gentlemen, the sun went down, or rather
seemed to dissolve bodily into the glowing clouds, which appeared but a
fusion of the great orb of light; the stars twinkled out in the
rose-coloured sky, and the evening air, as it fanned the earth to sleep,
was as soft as a summer's evening breeze in the north. A sort of dreamy
stillness seemed creeping over the world and into my spirit, as the canoe
just tilted against the steps that led to the wharf, raised by the scarce
perceptible heaving of the water. A melancholy, monotonous boat-horn
sounded from a distance up the stream, and presently, floating slowly down
with the current, huge, shapeless, black relieved against the sky, came
one of those rough barges piled with cotton, called, hereabouts, Ocone
boxes. The vessel itself is really nothing but a monstrous square box,
made of rough planks, put together in the roughest manner possible to
attain the necessary object of keeping the cotton dry. Upon this great
tray are piled the swollen apoplectic looking cotton bags, to the height
of ten, twelve, and fourteen feet. This huge water-waggon floats lazily
down the river, from the upper country to Darien. They are flat bottomed,
and, of course, draw little water. The stream from whence they are named
is an up country river, which, by its junction with the Ocmulgee, forms
the Altamaha. Here at least, you perceive the Indian names remain, and
long may they do so, for they seem to me to become the very character of
the streams and mountains they indicate, and are indeed significant to the
learned in savage tongues, which is more than can be said of such titles
as Jones's Creek, Onion Creek, &c. These Ocone boxes are broken up at
Darien, where the cotton is shipped either for the Savannah, Charleston
or Liverpool markets, and the timber, of which they are constructed,
sold.