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OutdOOrS \t> Georgia

George Busbee
Governor
Joe D. Tanner
Commissioner
BOARD OF NATURAL RESOURCES
Wade H. Coleman
Chairman Valdosta-- State-at-Large
Donald J. Carter Vice Chairman Gainesville-- 9th District
Leo T. Barber, Jr. Secretary
Moultrie-- 2nd District
James F. Darby Vidalia-- 1st District
Robert A. Collins, Jr. Americus-- 3rd District
George P. Dillard Decatur--4th District
Mary Bailey Izard Atlanta-- 5th District
James A. Mankin Griffin-- 6th District Lloyd L. Summer, Jr.
Rome-- 7th District
J. Wimbric Walker
McRae--8th District Walter W. Eaves
Elberton-- 10th District
Sam Cofer
St. Simons Island Coastal District Leonard E. Foote
-- Waleska State-at-Large
James D. Cone Decatur-- State-at-Large
A. Leo Lanman, Jr. Roswell-- State-at-Larg"e
DIVISION DIRECTORS
Parks and Historic Sites Division Henry D. Struble, Director
Game and Fish Division
Jack Crockford, Director
Environmental Protection Division J. Leonard Ledbetter, Director
Geologic and Water Resources Division Sam M. Pickering, Jr., Director
Office of Information and Education David Cranshaw, Director
Office of Planning and Research J. Clayton Fisher, Jr.
Office of Administrative Services James H. Pittman, Director

Volume 5

July 1976

Number 7

FEATURES

Elijah Clarke

Susan Wood 3

Oconee Preface

7

Oconee Journal

Richard Kristin

8

Pulaski and the Siege of Savannah . Bill Hammack 16

200 Years of Wildlife

Dick Davis 22

Voyage of the Unicorn

Bill Hammack 29

DEPARTMENTS

Letters to the Editor

32

FRONT COVER: A sunset on the Oconee River. Photo by Bob Busby.
BACK COVER: Casement at Ft. Pulaski, built in 1829 and named in honor of Gen.
Pulaski. Photo by Bob Busby.

Aaron Pass Rebecca N. Marshall Dick Davis Bill Hammack Jingle Davis
Susan Wood

MAGAZINE STAFF
Phone-656-5660

David Cranshaw Editor-in-Chief

Bill Morehead

Editor

Managing Editor
Writer Writer Writer Writer Writer Priscilla C. Powell

Liz Carmichael Jones
Mike Nunn ....

Bob Busby

.

.

.

Edward Brock .

Cathy Cardarelli .

Jim Couch

Circulation Manager

Art Director . . Illustrator
Photo Editor Photographer Photographer Photographer

Outdoors in Georgia is the official monthly magazine of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, published at the Department's offices, Room 713, 270 Washington Street, Atlanta, Georgia 30334. No advertising accepted. Subscriptions are $3 for one year or $6 for three years. Printed by Williams Printing Company, Atlanta, Georgia. Articles and photographs may be reprinted when proper credit given. Contributions are welcome, but the editors assume no responsibility or liability for loss or damage of articles, photographs, or illustrations. Second-class postage paid at Atlanta, Georgia. 31,000 copies printed at an approximate cost of $16,500. The Department of Natural Resources is an Equal Opportunity employer, and employs without regard to race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.

Editorial

Future Thoughts

Interaction between man and wildlife in North Amer-
ica has been a conflict. Since the arrival of the first European settlers, the use of the bountiful wildlife resource has been marked mainly by wastefulness and
greed. By 1900, wildlife was severely diminished over much of the country.
Since then, the concept of wildlife conservation has
made some great strides. Shocked by the dramatic de-
cline of game, the general public began to support
conservation. Game laws began to be enforced and
sportsmen, through license fees and special taxes, financed wildlife management.
Today, there appears to be a reversal in the trend of over-exploitation. Deer are probably more abundant in the east than when North America was a primeval
forest. Wild turkey and wood duck have been brought back from near-extinction. Beaver, once rare, are now considered too numerous in many localities. Program's
to identify and aid the various endangered wildlife species are underway.
We are proud of what has been done in wildlife
management, but considerable work lies ahead. The
future of the wildlife resource is cloudy.
Past wildlife abundance was an easy victim to the pressures of civilization. Today's relative abundance could just as easily be erased by lack of care or by over-protection. Certain problems seem to lead the list of concerns for the future of wildlife.
The anti-hunting issue has disturbing implications for the future of wildlife. The "It's immoral to kill anything" pseudo-ethic seems to be gaining popularity as
a cause. This may be caused by the fact that urban
society has little familiarity with the realities of the
natural world. Advanced by sincere people who hon-
estly believe that hunting is a threat to wildlife, this argument ignores the real problems and diverts effort from their solution. In this context, the hunter is miscast in the villain's role as an agent of destruction.
The effect of this on wildlife is important. Wildlife
-- agencies lose time, energy and money as they wage a
war on two fronts one with the forces which degrade the wildlife resource and the other with those factions who seek to end hunting and with it many mechanisms for the protection and enhancement of wildlife. If these factions are successful they could eliminate the two most important factors in the maintenance of modern wildlife populations; the hunter, and the funding base supported by him. The money is important, but so is
.My 1976

the broad constituency of sportsmen, who besides paying

for licenses and taxes, have contributed to and voted for

the high quality environment which produces game in

huntable numbers.

Other threats to wildlife may be even more dangerous

We as they attack the resource directly.

group them

under the broad heading of habitat degradation. Wild-

life is a product of its habitat and reflects very accu-

rately the quality of that habitat. Anything that harms

the habitat, harms the wildlife resource.

The use of hard pesticides and other injurious ele-

DDT ments has taken its toll of wildlife. From

in bald

eagles, to mercury in marsh hens, many of these chemi-

cals have been found. Other substances may have to

wait years before enough conclusive evidence can be

gathered to justify regulating their use.

Habitat alteration has a profound effect on the future

of wildlife. Right now we are losing wildlife lands at

unprecedented rates. Wetlands, forests, and even crop-

lands are being lost or altered. Timber stand conversion

to' pure pine and large monoculture field crops diminish

the diversity necessary to wildlife.

Huge public works projects constructed at taxpayers'

expense which often conflict with fish and wildlife values

must also be considered. Cost-benefit economics of some

projects are shaky, and in terms of most benefits, are

often not directed to the public at large. Fish and wild-

life personnel have fought these on a project by project

basis that, like the anti-hunter controversy, drains more

time and money.

Environmental issues are the real crux of wildlife's

future. Adverse effects are cumulative: a piece here, a

bit there, and difficult to see on the whole. They affect

not only the wildlife we hunt and catch, but the whole
-- of that wildlife heritage which remains to us game,

non-game and endangered species alike.
We should not be blinded by the favorable status of

wildlife today, for man's progress and wildlife's destiny

are on a collision course just as they were in colonial
times. As conflicts between man and wildlife increase, environmental battles must be won time after time but

need to be lost only once.

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1776 1976
Elijah Clarke
Patriot or Scoundrel?
By Susan Wood
i-j lijah Clarke, the "Hero of the Hornet's Nest" of Wilkes County,
led hardy pioneers who fought In-
dians and British in Georgia to remain free settlers on their chosen land. Clarke could inspire little more
than a handful of men (and women)
to such defiant courage that whole regiments of British or whole bands of Indians would think they'd surely met their match.
A born leader, Clarke was the
man everyone in Georgia's back-
country turned to in time of fear, confusion or defeat, so trusted that
400 women and children followed
him some 350 miles over snowy mountains to safety in the Wautauga Valley of North Carolina.
For Clarke was first, last and always a frontier fighter, in early days out of necessity. Moving his family from British-oppressed North Carolina to Wilkes County, Georgia sometime after 1773, Clarke found himself deep in Indian wilderness. Clarke's Fort soon became the place
Clarke lived in what was Wilkes County, in a log cabin very much
like this reconstruction. Photo by Susan Wood
July 1976

The museum at Elijah Clark State
Park displays uniforms, documents and letters, circa 1780.
Illiterate, Elijah Clarke has created
much controversy and confusion
over the spelling of his name. Here, his purported signature omits the
"e". More recent discoveries,
however, indicate that the usual signature was "Elijah Clarke." The state park, though, is Elijah Clark State Park.

of refuge for neighbors' families left
alone when Clarke led his "Wilkes
Riflemen" to battle. His Dragoons, numbering any-
where from about 40 to more than 300, left their Christmas dinner once to chase marauding Indians who had brutally killed a neighbor family. These men fought for their very survival against Indians, and then the British headed for Wilkes County to capture it. Having fled from strong British rule in North Carolina, the pioneers were not to be overcome even by well-equipped, well-trained British who greatly outnumbered the
patriots.
Led by their leader Elijah Clarke, the riflemen soon became masters of guerrilla tactics. Almost always outnumbered, they found it necessary to "hit and run" if they were to be successful. As such a frontier leader,
Elijah Clarke is said to rank with the
legendary "Swamp Fox," Francis Marion. He loved danger and was at his best in a fight, and so his men came to be.
Among members of his loyal band
was Nancy Hart, the feisty, redhaired spy who on at least one occasion dressed up as a man to be able to walk about unnoticed. Piling her hair under her hat and pretending to be insane, she once strode into Brit-
ish-occupied Augusta, talking to soldiers, noting the strength of fortifications and taking one Tory prisoner.
Clarke's wife, Hannah Arrington
Clarke, also traveled with the army, tending her smallpox-scarred hus-
band and teen-aged son John who fought alongside his father. Hannah nursed their wounds and saw them
through malaria, leaving her other

seven children with Wilkes County
neighbors.
Stout-hearted Hannah, the genteel up-country lady, defended their own home against storming Indians be-
fore the Revolution. When on one
-- occasion, Clarke and his men left a
score of neighbors women, chil-
-- dren and elderly men safely har-
bored at Clarke's Fort, rampaging Indians attacked. Though the men, knowing they were outnumbered, had decided to surrender, Hannah angrily protested, "Never will we give up while I can load a gun!" So
with the women loading rifles and muskets, the men put up such a de-
fense that the Indians soon retreated, thinking the Dragoons were still
there.
Hearing of the attack on his fort, Clarke vowed never to rest until he had pushed the Indians back across
the Oconee. As it turned out, he
didn't rest even then. Clarke and his frontiersmen dis-
tinguished themselves as Revolutionary patriots in 1779 at the Battle of Kettle Creek near Washington, Geor-

gia. As Redcoats marched on their homes, Clarke and his spirited frontiersmen joined forces with Col. John Dooly of Wilkes County and Col. Andrew Pickens of South Carolina to turn back the British. The 400 motley men with their hit-and-run
tactics relentlessly defended their land. Col. Clarke saw a chance to close in on the enemy's rear and seize a strategic hill to turn the tide. This Battle of Kettle Creek was a turning point of the Revolution in Georgia.
Fiercely, belligerently patriotic,
Clarke wanted more than anything to recapture Augusta, in the hands of traitor Thomas Brown, Clarke's former neighbor from Wilkes County. In September 1780 after many battles and many more wounds, Clarke and 300 men joined Col. James McCall of South Carolina with but 80 men to march on Augusta. Nancy Hart, using her guise as a crazy peddler, had already been into Augusta and reported to Clarke what she had found. After fierce fighting, Clarke's companies ap-

Cutdoors \t) Georgia

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July 1976

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peared on the verge of victory when British reinforcements arrived and the patriots were resigned to retreat. They left Col. Thomas Brown badly wounded and very angry; Brown or-
dered brutal revenge against all patriots and their sympathizers.
In 1781, though, the pioneer soldiers, bitterly angry over the destruc-
tion of their homes and determined to get their own revenge, readied for another march on Augusta to recapture it and hang traitor Thomas Brown. This time they succeeded. Col. Clarke, face pock-marked from
a recent bout with smallpox, inspired
the once-dejected men from all over the South. The furious three-week
battle was finally won, thanks to support received from Col. Lighthorse Harry Lee.
When the Revolution finally ended
in 1783, Clarke resumed his protec-
tion of the frontier against the In-
dians. Clarke had been granted several large tracts of land in Wilkes and Washington Counties in payment for his valiant Revolutionary effort, received other lands through a variety of means and had purchased some
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additional property in and around
Savannah. Clarke, now land-hungry,
was vitally interested in protection of his new lands. Because of his reputa-
tion as a fierce Indian fighter, Elijah
Clarke was soon named to a commission to make treaties with Cherokees and Creeks. Negotiations
brought to Georgia all the land east of the Oconee River, as Clarke had
once vowed. And after taking his seat in the new House of Assembly, Clarke was named to the only com-
mittee that dealt with Indian affairs. 1793 found Spain sending agents
from Florida into the Indian nations of Georgia to organize Indians against Georgia. Long an ally of the Indians, Spain had set up trading posts in Indian lands and soon began sending arms and ammunition to Indian warriors. Georgia protested vehemently to Spain and appealed to the U.S. Government for assistance
--but official response was neither
immediate nor satisfactory. This doubtless angered at least one of the
-- frontiersmen Elijah Clarke.
About this time, the French Am-
bassador to the United States, Ed-
mond Charles Genet, was attempting
to raise troops to seize Spanish-held Florida and Louisiana for the French. In Georgia, there was great enthusi-
asm for the French Revolution. Georgians were said to wear the colors of France to show their loyalty.
In taverns throughout Georgia, toasts
were made to "our brothers in
France." Clarke, though really only loyal to himself, was always on the side opposed to the Indians, allied with Spain.
An offer was made to Col. Elijah
Clarke to join the invasion so Clarke, always the fighter, agreed because, after all, he would be only protecting Georgia from a possible invasion from the Spanish-backed Indians. Resigning his commission as Major General in the Georgia Militia,
Clarke recruited many of the same Dragoons who had stuck with him
before, several hundred in all, and marched to the banks of the St. Mary's River, poised for action. The situation was fast becoming an inter-
national incident when Thomas Jef-
ferson, acting for President George
Washington, demanded that the

These reconstructions of Elijah Clarke's first and second homes house the Elijah Clark Museum. The smaller house (at rear) is a replica of Clarke's first home, later used as a kitchen.

French recall the instigator Genet. They did, leaving Clarke and his
men stranded with no support even
from the state they were protecting. Though the attack did not occur,
Clarke and his men were called
heroes by Georgia back-country citi-
zens for sacrificing so much for the
safety of Georgia. Neither the federal nor state government, however, felt Clarke's actions were at all
heroic.
Meanwhile the Creeks in north Georgia had been rampaging, killing settlers and their families indiscriminately, so history books tell. In defense of the Indians, it must be brought out many Georgians, among them one Elijah Clarke, invaded the lands the government had officially
given to the Indians. Indian plunderings and rampages were, for the most part, in retaliation for plunderings and rampages by the back-country
men, eager for land and wealth.
Realizing that they were men with-
out a country, Clarke suggested to his stranded troops that they create
their own republic on the Indian side
of the Oconee. Not realizing that such action might be treasonous, Clarke believed that only through this new republic could he and his
men help protect the western border of Georgia. The Trans-Oconee Re-
public as it would later be called

soon had its own Constitution, its own officers and a Council of Safety. Each man was promised, among other things, 640 acres and an addi-
tional 500 if the republic survived the year. Clarke claimed that he had acquired this land through an earlier treaty with the Indians, but no one knows this to be true. At any rate, Clarke proceeded to lay out Ft. Advance, the first of six planned outposts, across the river from the U.S. Fort Fidius.
Clarke had hoped that their mere presence on the border would terrify the Indians and, indeed, the rampage ceased almost immediately. Residents of western Georgia, of course, welcomed the peace and the protection by Clarke and his men. Again, Clarke's followers were heroes in the eyes of some Georgians. Clarke felt
that with the Indians pacified, neither the state nor federal government
could be bothered by his new re-
public. In fact, he believed that the government had no constitutional
right to interfere. How wrong he
was . . .
To make a long story short, Clarke
and his disappointed, disillusioned soldiers were finally forced out by
state militia forces who burned the
last vestiges of the Trans-Oconee Republic.
About this same time, Elijah

Clarke and his sons, John, who later became a governor, and Elijah, Jr., who studied at Yale, again ran afoul of the government when they became involved in the infamous Yazoo Land Fraud.
Now aging, scarred and tired, Eli-
jah Clarke was ready to put down
his gun and enjoy the rest of his days
in relative peace. But this may not
have iasted long. Reports have recently been found indicating that Clarke led yet another expedition against the Indians in 1796. The old frontier soldier died in Wilkes County on December 15, 1799, and was buried at his home, Woodburn, in
what is now Lincoln County.

History books have portrayed

Elijah Clarke as a true hero, a pa-

triotic soldier.

But Clarke's actions can be seen
-- in another light less heroic, but
probably more realistic. Recent research has shown that there was an-

other side to Elijah Clarke.

The Georgia patriots from Savannah (Lyman Hall, Button Gwinnett and others) regarded Elijah Clarke as an "upstart" who was not interested in the good of Georgia but in what was best for him. They apparently felt that if he had Georgia's good at heart, his actions should have been within the legal framework of the new government. Clarke did, however, break more laws than
he obeyed.

"Opportunist" has been a word

ascribed to Elijah Clarke, and may-

be that is a good description. He has also been called a hustler. When he

began his incursions against the In-

dians and the British, Clarke was

broke. Somehow he emerged from

the Revolution a rich man, a man

with much land and many slaves.

Some land was deeded to him by the

How state, it's true.

much remains a

question.

So maybe old Elijah's heroics were just based on greed, admittedly a very human trait. The first taste of
wealth apparently whetted his appe-
tite. So when his fortunes began to dwindle, Elijah banded together his loyal followers and rode off in search

of greater wealth.

Elijah Clarke was human, after all.

Outdoors it? Georgia

I suppose everyone who lives near a river must sometimes wonder what would be seen if he followed
that rushing current to wherever it goes. I live a couple miles from the upper Oconee and have had such thoughts about it. Early in April, 1976, I decided to
float down the river to the coast, to see what would
be seen.
The Oconee is not renowned for its scenic beauty like
the Chattooga, nor does it drain half the continent like
the Mississippi. So some may wonder, why bother
with it?
At times I have wished that the Oconee had more of a picture-book kind of beauty like the upper
Chattahoochee, instead of mud and mosquitoes. But when I find fault with a rich and varied natural
landscape, I realize the fault lies not in nature but in a
narrowness of my imagination. The Oconee has its own
-- values a beaver runway down a steep bank; thickets of
slender, jointed cane; a bright yellow bird, the prothonotary warbler, shining in the thick greenness of the bottomland forest.
The Oconee River's headwaters lie in the hills
southeast of Gainesville in north Georgia. It then runs through mid-Georgia to join the Ocmulgee, and together
they become the Altamaha. The Altamaha runs into the sea far south of Savannah. As for the Altamaha, I had seen it from a couple of highway bridges and knew that with Spanish moss, cypress and ospreys, it would be an exotic experience. I had also read of the Altamaha in a
July 1976

book, The Travels of William Bartram. Bartram was a botanist who traveled through much of Georgia in the

eighteenth century.

I wondered if the Altamaha could still inspire the same admiration that it did in William Bartram 200

years ago this July.
First, I needed to build a canoe. I made a strong bottom frame of a pair of 12 foot poplar saplings,

tied together at each end, and separated by short

crosspieces. Similarly I put together a double ended gunwale frame separated by thwarts, but of slightly
larger dimensions. Young saplings of ash and alder

served as ribs to connect the gunwale and bottom
frames. To the ribs I lashed switchcane to make a

floor.
Over this frame I stretched some old house painter's canvas and stapled it to the gunwales and ends. After sewing up some holes, I painted the canvas with two coats of tar. The canoe took three or four days to build
and my only expenses were for string and tar, about

three dollars. This canoe completed the 10 day, 265 mile trip without one leak or repair, though I had to be

very careful to avoid snags.
I began my trip down the river near Milledgeville at
Highway 22 so I wouldn't have to paddle through Lake Sinclair and portage the dam. Under the dark overhead

skies, I looked a bit anxiously at the broad, rushing river

my and

small, fragile canoe . . .

Richard Kristin

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Oconee
Journal
By Richard Kristin

Wednesday, April 14
Dad drove me to Milledgeville. With some difficulty we hauled the canoe and gear down a steep bank and I set off down the broad, brown current. As I waved good-by to Dad, I felt lonely as I always do when he takes me to the start of a solo trip.
The current carried me sometimes between banks of
floodplain forest, and sometimes through sunny green pastures behind a fringe of trees. Passed a bluff with brand new springtime leaves and a blooming fringtree as an unseen hawk started screaming. This I took to be a good omen.
Saw many hawks, but without binoculars and manual 1 couldn't identify them. Sometimes the river ran
-- straight for long stretches a long aisle of rumpled
brown water between low, soft green walls. The boat
A drifted on, seemingly going nowhere. kingfisher
breaks the lazy spell, when it gives its rattle, dives from its perch and skims over the water. Or a great blue heron jumps from the bank and beats its way into the sky with its broad wings.
The first few miles with its pastures and dark metamorphic rock gave me the impression of still being
Outdoors ip Georgia

home in the Piedmont. Here the Oconee Indians had
their village in the early eighteenth century, and here William Bartram crossed the river on his journey to the
Mississippi River.
The sky got black, and thunder made my nerves
tingle. Stayed close to the banks to avoid danger.
A gusty wind and a spattering of rain convinced me that
I was in for a downpour. As soon as I had set up camp, the storm blew over. I made a pot of oatmeal for dinner. Some friendly fishermen came by and gave me three crappies, which I roasted over the fire. Took a short walk, chewing on simlax shoots and admiring the flower
of false garlic (Allium bivalve).

Thursday, April 15

As the sun rose out of the woods, I shoved off. After

a while, a flock of goldfinches materialized out of a dead

tree, flew halfway across the river and en masse turned

around and merged with the dead tree again. I heard some crunching. Looked down and saw a big, wet

beaver sitting on a level willow trunk half submerged in
the river. I watched him chomp away at a leafy plant
A held between his front paws. bit later, passed a large

turtle lazily paddling downstream.

As if that wasn't enough, 1 soon saw a doe and her fawn (no spots) walk through the bamboo.

About midday, passed a 1 5-foot-tall bluff of sedimentary rock covered with pines. At the lower end

was a boat launching ramp and dirt road with only a moderate amount of litter. Saw a three- or four-foot snake crossing the river. The body was floating
surprisingly high in the water. When I got close enough

to see diamond-shaped markings, I started

backpaddling.

In the afternoon, the river ran in S-shaped loops for

hours, always with a sandbar and willows on the inside,

and a steep cut bank with scrubby trees and switchcane on the outside. The river is full of snags so I had to pay
close attention to avoid ripping my canoe. Toward evening I saw a couple prothonotary warblers. Camped

on a low bluff of chestnut oaks and palmetto a couple

am miles past a railroad trestle. I

starting to see

Spanish moss and cypress.

Friday, April 16
Grabbed some peanuts and pushed off. In less than an hour passed under Highway 57. The next couple of miles after the bridge were the most majestic that I had yet seen on the Oconee. High sandy banks with tall, moss draped cypress, backed by a rich hardwood forest which included large magnolias. I really felt I was in the coastal plain. Along here I saw a female wood duck
flutter off, dragging her wing-tips in the water. I looked
toward the spot she had come from and, sure enough, there were her fuzzy little ducklings. When the ducklings saw that I was not following their mother, they scampered off after her.
Passed through more bends and came to a tall bluff at
about I I a.m. Rested in a cool forest of tall beeches.
Passed throueh more bends then came to a wide

July 1976

majestic stretch again. At 1 : 30 saw water pour sparkling from a pipe at a boat landing. Some ladies there told me that the water is an artesian well and that this place is
Blackshear's Ferry. Old fellow told me that when he was young, they used to float rafts of lumber down to Darien
from here. River continued wide and handsome from here to
Dublin. At Dublin passed a noisy pulpmill and tied up at the bridge. Jogged across the bridge in the noise and confusion of heavy traffic, made a phone call and jogged back all in five minutes. Below Dublin felt upset at the roar of bulldozers, effluent pipes and garbage.
Camped on a low bluff past Interstate 16. Squirrels
very numerous today. I noticed on today's run that wherever the river winds
around a lot, you have willow, sycamore, boxelder, maple, hackberry, etc. Where the banks are high, sandy and steep, and the river is a wide surging flood, curving
gently in the distance, there are the large cypress,
magnolia, oak, hickory, beech and Spanish moss. Saturday, April 17
Saw more motorboats today than all the previous days combined. The river passed through tight bends till I almost got dizzy. Saw two osprey, (or maybe the same one twice) and a vine with showy clusters of
lilac-colored flowers. (Later I identified it as probably Wisteria frutescens. )
Landed at a high bluff covered with a tall, open forest
A of white oak, hickory and magnolia. good place to
rest and enjoy dark green foliage and reddish-purple
Slider Turtle
blossoms of the buckeye and white blossoms of the locust. The native azaleas have almost completed flowering here while a mere 75 miles north of here at Milledgeville they were in full bloom a couple days ago.
Slipped in the mud and fell into the river up to my waist
while approaching the canoe. At intervals of a mile or two passed three more bluffs
on the right, some tall, rocky and handsome. More
twisting bends for hours. After passing a very tall bluff and another majestic
section like at Route 57, stopped at a sandbar shaded by

Turkey Vulture

Photo by Aaron Pass

tall pines and oaks. Rested, made oatmeal, bathed and caught up on journal.
In the late afternoon and evening I paddled the winding river through a beautiful floodplain forest of
A large hardwoods. serene sky and big, luxuriant trees
can float you into tranquility. Camped within hearing
distance of Route 46.

Sunday, April 18

Owls hooted and caterwauled through the night.

I hear them every night and often during the day too.
Woke to the singing of birds in the grey dawn,

as usual.
Highway 46 crosses at a handsome bluff. Picnic area here. The river is broad, shallow and winding to Route

280, with occasional bluffs. At one wide sandbar a group of black and turkey

vultures, well over a dozen, were spread all over the
beach at even intervals. Like human sunbathers, I

suppose they wanted to invade each other's privacy as

little as possible.
I landed at the boat landing at Highway 280 and
asked a man if there was a phone at Ochwalkee. He said there wasn't, but very kindly offered to drive me to Mount Vernon, three miles away. Mount Vernon has an

old 1 890-styIe downtown with a beautiful courthouse.

After 280, the river splits into several channels as it

passes through a low floodplain forest. Made camp on a

high, grassy, open sandbar between a pair of persimmon

My trees.

first campsite without wall to wall mosquitoes.

Some real nice fishermen visited with me for a while.

Had my first unmolested sunset as a horde of dragonflies

darted about eating mosquitoes.

Monday, April 19
A mile below camp I filled the water bottles from an
artesian well at a badly littered boat landing. I knew I was close to where the Oconee joins the Ocmulgee to become the Altamaha, so I voluntarily hurried. Passed hours of winding bends. Finally the river passed under a bridge where there is a large colony of summer homes and broadened majestically. There the muddy Oconee met

10

the clearer Ocmulgee almost head on, merging to a
-- powerful, welling current the Altamaha. I landed at
this point and had a little one-man celebration with peanuts and water.
Paddled several miles onward passing a large boat launching ramp with many waterskiers and what was once a beautiful bluff of rocks and moss-hung trees but is now desecrated by outhouses halfway down the slope and vacation homes perched on top.
Camped a few miles down where the river is as broad
as a lake. In one tree lived an anole or chameleon.
I could usually find him when I looked for him. Sometimes green and sometimes brown, he often bobbed on his front legs and inflated a flattened orange bladder about the size of a quarter. Along the shore I came upon a myrtle warbler that couldn't fly and had been left behind by the flocks flying north. I wished him luck. The next morning before I left, I found him foraging for bugs on the ground. He was not kicking up leaves like most ground feeding birds do. He might make it. Tuesday, April 20
At dawn there was a very thick fog so 1 just dozed until I could see the dim outline of the other shore. The
Photo by Bob Busby
Outdoors it? Georgia

moss-hung cypresses, looking so primitive with their swelled bases, narrow trunks, and feathery, horizontal crowns, looked even more distorted in the blowing mist and eerie morrning light. I thought this could have been the dawn of time. The fog slowly burned off making the sky a swirl of hazy blue and soft grey.
Met a biologist, John Adams, and another man whose name I didn't catch, who have the job of detecting and
minimizing any thermal pollution caused by an atomic
reactor downstream at U.S. Highway 1. He told me a lot
about the wildlife on the river and about the river scene in general. I was glad to hear that the water in this section of the river was in excellent condition. While we
were talking, my acquaintances identified a marsh hawk and a Mississippi kite, and told me to watch for a pair of
swallowtail kites, perhaps the most graceful fliers in North America, at a certain place downstream.
-- At Highway 1 passed the atomic reactor something
out of the space age with huge concrete buildings without windows, concrete silos the shape of cottage
cheese boxes and hardly a person to be seen,
disembodied voices floating out of loudspeakers.
Camped on a high sandbar farther downstream.

Wednesday, April 21
Fog again this morning but not so thick. Saw an osprey early in the morning. Pileated woodpeckers are especially numerous in this section, saw three today flashing their handsome pattern of red, white and black.
The whole river has been full of hawks. 1 glided in my
canoe past willow thickets where American egrets
presented long-necked, white silhouettes against the dark foliage; past forests of great oaks where prothonotary warblers shined like little golden suns against the greenness.
Toward the afternoon the clouds built up into white mountainous masses. Winds stirred the billowing crowns of oaks and rippled the water.
I saw some white birds roosting in a cypress with a dead top. Most flew off as I approached, but one obligingly stayed so I could observe him closely. Here

July 1976

White Ibis-

Photo by Aaron Pass

was the white ibis, with his long, reddish, down-curved bill. Thereafter I saw many flocks of these birds flying
V in shifting formations, sunlight shining through their
white wings, their wingtips black.
This section of river between Highways 121 and 301 has been great for viewing birds. Saw great and little blue herons, wood ducks (all along river), anhingas and
another osprey in the evening.
Heard logging going on at two places, the trees cut
right down to the riverbank in one place. Many scrubby
sections are due, evidently, to logging in the past, though
much fine forest remains. The only other intrusion by man is a large fish camp on a high clay bluff.
Camped on a high sandbar above Oglethorpe Bluff. Wanted to camp earlier, but this section has few good
places to camp, being very low-lying, with a few cypress
and gum swamps. A fisherman told me that 1 camped
above Oglethorpe Bluff where Oglethorpe was chased
into the river by hostile Indians. Also told me I was close to a boat ramp and Highway 301 . The sandbar
was filthy with litter before I cleaned it up somewhat.
A dark thunderstorm passed over with no more than a
little threatening lightning and some gusting winds.

II

Thursday, April 22
As I packed the canoe this morning, a cloud of white ibis passed right overhead with a whooshing, swishing
sound.
Filled up on water from a spigot at Oglethorpe Bluff. Paddled a couple miles downstream past unsightly houseboat colonies. The boats generally didn't look too bad, but the bulldozed roads and garbage do. Phoned home from a tumble-down marina.
Just downstream was the ugliest sight on the river, the lTT-Rayonier plant. It is a monstrosity of black smokestacks, metal frames many stories high, rusty metal walls, a general humming and banging, and a foul
odor in the air. Reminded me of the castle of the black witch. Some men were spray painting the 301 bridge.
I smelled the paint in the air and saw a green film on the
water. Those men were breathing that. Felt upset and paddled away rapidly.
Soon came by a half submerged old steamboat with paddle wheels and a pilot house on its two-story
superstructure.
The farther I went the lower and swampier the floodplain forest became. Saw a couple osprey; water

Photo by Jim Couch
birds remain abundant. Traveled about eight miles downstream and came by a large sandy bluff with old, mossy live oaks. Entered an enchanted forest where
butterflies fluttered among clusters of white, bell-shaped flowers of some kind of huckleberry.
Just as the most beautiful sight in the desert is water,
the most beautiful sight in a swamp is an island. It is only early afternoon, but I decided to camp here and explore the island. First I pitched camp and wrote in the
journal, sitting on the edge of the steep bluff, 20 feet above the river. Cool breezes kept off the mosquitoes. Then, feeling fatigued, I took a nap in the mosquito tent, pitched in the shade of two huge live oaks.
Feeling refreshed, took a walk around the edge of the island. Walking downstream along the bluff came to
some huge oaks on the floodplain among pools of stagnant water. Here 1 found a king snake about a foot
12

Photo by Aaron Pass
and a half long. It is a slender snake with broad banks of moist dark orange, separated by three narrow bands, black-yellow-black respectively. Found an old overgrown road on the island, and on a large beech the inscription, "Ed. Hope, 1907." Glimpsed a warbler with a yellow spot on his cheek (a black throated green warbler? ) . Found a large alligator hole but no tracks or alligator.
Friday, April 23
After making oatmeal at sunrise, spent the morning walking around the island trying to get some pictures. I was not too successful because at first there was not enough light in this thick forest and later the light meter
quit on me. Many very old hollies. Mucking around out in the swamp a little I saw some light in the forest. Hoping for an oxbow lake, 1 headed out that way. I was surprised when 1 came out of the swamp on the river bank, and there to the left was the sandy bluff of my camp. Confused as to how this could be, I walked to' the bluff and found that it was not my island, but a
look-alike that 1 had reached by walking across a river
bend. Continuing my walk, I found the tracks of a medium sized alligator (three big toes and a drag mark.)
I met a fisherman checking his set lines. He showed me a striped bass several feet long and said he'd caught
55 pounds of fish the day before on 50 set lines. I often saw striped bass jumping, apparently often from sheer exuberance. One jumped six times in a row. I asked if
Outdoors ip Georgia

July 1976

13

he'd seen any alligator and he said he had cut a big one off a line a couple days ago.
Late in the morning I loaded my canoe and set off. Saw several flocks of ibis including the most impressive
-- waterfowl spectacle 1 have ever seen well over a
hundred ibis wheeling in the sky like the blowing fog. At first the river continued winding back and forth,
narrow, with a swift current along the outer part of the bends, and slack water along the inner parts. In the lee of the willows I sometime saw beds of spatterdock and
reeds. Saw occasional fishermen and houseboats, but
most were concentrated around the area of the Paradise Fishing Camp.
Then the river broadened, deepened and followed a straighter course. Gathered some blueberries. At sunset
A an osprey roosted in a tree across the river. turkey
gobbled several times.
Oh yes, a deer came up to the tent last night and went
through a hoof stomping and snorting act, before galloping off through the brush.
Saturday, April 24
Heard more logging in the morning. River continued broad and sandy with a fairly high floodlplain covered with young pine, mostly.
Exploring up Smith Lake, a large slough, I spotted five strange "ducks" swimming together. I paddled
rapidly after them, and although they swam away as rapidly as they could, the allowed me to approach to
25 or 30 feet before taking off, treading water on the lift off. They had thin crests, long flesh-colored beaks, and were a rusty brown color. Female mergansers.
Here I also saw my first yellow-crowned night heron.
A little below, I landed at old Fort Barrington, which
is now a boat ramp. Walked up the road maybe 40
yards to the remains of the old walls. Bartram had passed through here many times, as I had myself on a bicycle trip two years ago. The place was full of people, including a little boy with a string of large bass.
For the next several miles the river was so full of motorboats that I could not enjoy myself for all the noise. Just past the trestle the river is blighted by garbage like old washing machines put on the bank to prevent the river from eroding near some cabins.
Below the bridge there were many fewer motorboats, though there were a good many houseboats. The river wound through some bends, and then opened to a broad,
gently winding stretch where one could see for miles. 1 probably ought to have camped above here so as to hit
the tidal section in the morning, but there were so many motor and houseboats that I did not feel like it. Below the bends there were low swampy forests without dry, open campsites. I thought I'd try to make Darien
tonight.
At the upper end of Cambers Island I met some kind
of law enforcement officer. He just stopped his boat and stared at me. So I started asking questions. He told me
Yellow-Crowned Night Heron
Photo by Bob Busby

14

Outdoors it? Georgia

that the tide had turned and was just behind him, so I couldn't make Darien. Said there was a good place to camp opposite Butler River. Battling the wind, tide and
waves, my speed varied from a snail's pace to a
standstill. It was the hardest paddling I have ever done
and it took me at least a couple of hours to make the three miles to my campsite. Passed some creeks that lead into Buffalo swamp and a "Bartram Trail" sign at the mouth of Rifle Cut.

Sunday, April 25

Awoke before dawn began to break. Drifting, just

drifting down the river through tall, rustling reeds, I

found this Sunday morning to be especially peaceful.

Didn't see many birds, just a few red-winged blackbirds,

but glimpsed some beautiful spider lilies and wild roses

along the shore.

In a three-hour journey today, I saw only one

fisherman and one motorboat. This was such a contrast

to the day before when I could hardly enjoy drifting for

the noisy, darting boats. Today I could relax.

As I floated past Interstate 95 and the highway just

before reaching Darien, I could see the forested shore of

the mainland over the great expanse of reeds. I could

almost have been one of the soldiers from old Fort

King George.

All along the way I wanted to explore the creeks that
seemed to lead to nowhere, but I didn't want to snag my

canoe on submerged rocks and sticks. I'll save that trip
-- for another journey- with a fiberglass boat.

Drifted past Darien and met a man John Adams had

told me would store my canoe for me. He not only did

that, but he took me all around town looking for the

We place the bus would stop.

found it, and 1 waited

three hours for a bus to take me home.

Back to civilization, e

Rifle Cut Darien

July 1976

Photos by Bob Busby 15

Pulaski and the Siege

16

Outdoors \r> Georgia

In his 20 by 12 foot painting, "Pulaski at Savannah." Stanislaus Batowski captured the moment when the general was hit as he led a
cavalry charge against the British.

Original at Polish Museum of America, Chicago, Illinois.
of Savannah
By Bill Hammack

-- Savannah, 9 October 1779, a little
after midnight With the clinks and
clanks of men girding for battle
seemingly amplified yet paradoxically hushed by the dark stillness, a
mixed force of more than 3,000 men
gets set to attack, to try to drive the British out of occupied Savannah.
There are soldiers under the French
-- banner Frenchmen, some Irishmen
and black troops from the French
-- West Indies led by officers who are
members of the French nobility, some with titles stretching back for generations, and there are Ameri-
cans.
There are Georgia militiamen and
Continental Army soldiers with
names that in the future will sound
like part of a roll call of the state's
-- counties Mcintosh, Twiggs, Jack-- son, Habersham, Meriwether along
with Carolinian? like Colonel John
Laurens and a small, quiet man named Francis Marion who will live in history as the "Swamp Fox" and Dr. David Ramsay the historian, and men from other colonies. There are
some Polish hussars.
Entrenched in this British-occupied seaport, determined to hold this vital bastion against the Allies, are English redcoats, Scottish Highlanders, Hessians, American Tories from Georgia and the Carolinas and elsewhere in the torn colonies, armed slaves, Creek and Cherokee warriors. The British defenders number around 2,400.
Slow minutes crawl by in the darkness. Suddenly the wild skirl of bag-
pipes shatters the stillness. It is a
chilling sound to the American and French forces. It warns that the British know the Allies are coming.
Five o'clock: The fog lies heavy, like
a gray shroud. Dawn breaks, sil-
very in the haze. There's the smell of

July 1976

7
l

1

Casimir Pulaski was one of the outstanding foreign officers who served in George Washington's army. The Polish patriot's heroic death at Savannah helped enshrine his memory in the United States.
Courtesy, Georgia Department of Archives and History.

the river and the mud and the clammy sweat of men just before battle.
Advance elements of the Allies reach the edge of the woods on the right of
the British line.
Five-thirty: Sounds of shots whiplash through the fog, from feints by Americans on the British left and by the French at the center. This is the signal for the main assault, Vattaque
de vive force. Drummers furiously beat the charge, Frenchmen shout the Bourbon battle cry Vive le roi! The grenadiers of Old France in their
white uniforms surge forward, ghosts from the mists on the warpath.

Americans storm the British entrenchments. British cannon cut loose. They are loading chains, nails, bolts and all sorts of scrap along with canister. Murderous fire rips the Allies. The ground runs red as some of the bluest of the blue blood of France mingles with the blood of American patriots. In spite of the slaughter, a young cavalry general
charges the British lines. He is hit. He falls from his horse. One of his men carries him back from the battlefield. He is taken to the American
brig Wasp.

The young general's wound was fatal. He died two days later on 1 October as the Wasp sailed toward

Charlestown. His body was con-
signed to the sea. He was 32 years old. He gave his life for American freedom a long way from home. He

had been exiled from his native land

by its Russian conqueror because

he had fought the aggressor with such
patriotic fury and daring. He had

been born and raised in a small town

in Poland. His name was Kazimierz

Pulaski.

"He was an outstanding soldier

and patriot," says U.S. District Judge

Alexander A. Lawrence of Savan-

nah, the distinguished Georgia his-

torian whose book Storm Over Sa-

vannnah is the definitive work on this

pivotal battle.
No man from overseas who came

to America to fight for liberty in the

Revolution has been honored by as
many memorials in this country as
-- Kazimierz the Christian name has -- been anglicized to "Casimir" Pu-

laski, not even General the Marquis

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette. From

the time shortly after Pulaski's death

in 1779 when a section of German-

town, Pennsylvania, started calling

itself Pulaskitown, his name has been

taken by counties, cities, towns,

streets, schools and parks throughout

the United States. Highways and bridges have been named for him,

statues and monuments have been

erected to his memory. Hundreds of

civic, social, sports and veterans' as-

sociations bear his name. He's the

hero of an early American opera.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and

other poets have sung of him. Paint-

ings and busts and plaques and me-

dallions of him abound; at the 1933

Chicago World's Fair, Stanislaus

Batowski's "Pulaski at Savannah"
won second place in a competition

for America's most popular painting.

Earlier, in 1929 Congress designated

October 1 1 as Pulaski Day and

recognition of the day is widespread;

New it's observed in cities like

York,

Detroit, Chicago and Savannah with
parades, pomp and ceremony. For

several years, Poland has marked the

day with speeches in Warka, where

Pulaski was born.

Outdoors ip Georgia

No state honors Pulaski more than
the one where he fell. Savannah citizens wanted to erect a monument to him; Lafayette laid the cornerstone in 1825 on his visit to the city. While that monument failed to rise, in 1853 on the 74th anniversary of Pulaski's
death. Savannah unveiled a memorial of marble, the work of Polish
sculptor Robert L. Launitz, in the city's Monterey Square. Another square in Savannah bears Pulaski's name. Savannah's Fort Pulaski, a
Civil War fortification, is a U.S. Na-
tional Monument. There's the Georgia county of Pulaski and the Georgia town of Pulaski.
"Why this long sustained outburst
honoring Pulaski?" asked Dr. Joseph A. Wytrwal of Detroit, historian and educator, in an article in The Geor-
gia Historical Quarterly about "Me-
morials to General Casimir Pulaski in the United States." Dr. Wytrwal continued: "There were other for-
eigners who came to America to fight

for liberty; but even Lafayette himself . . . has not been honored with as
many memorials as has Pulaski. May
not the answer be the fact that Pulaski was the only one of the distin-
guished foreigners who was killed in the American Revolution?"
Dr. Wytrwal agrees that Pulaski's
courage and elan may contribute to American admiration of the Polish patriot. Many other brave men from
overseas died the death of heroes in the Revolution. But Pulaski was indeed a "distinguished foreigner," a leader, and he earned his distinction
the hard way. He was born in 1747
in the small town of Warka, near Warsaw. As Joseph Wiewiora writes in a brief biography of Pulaski, Russia started reaching out for Poland
during Pulaski's early years. Pulaski's first encounter with the Russians
took place in 1767. The 20-year-old man was trapped with 200 fellow
Poles, encircled by 4,000 Russian soldiers. But Pulaski and his compa-

This diagram of the opposing forces, from The Siege of Savannah by
C. C. Jones, published in 1874, indicates at upper right "Pulawsky &

Virginia Light Dragon's Camp."

\ '.-.. *

A* -

.-' *"T.* i .i , i . C C ^ J ,. i .

triots broke through and after a long
hard journey, made it to Krakow. The following year he and his
father Jozef and a group of patriotic gentry formed the Confederacy of Bar (a city in a Polish province) to defend Poland from Russian aggression. Pulaski's father, a wealthy man, was known as Pan Jozef. "Pan" is the equivalent of the English "Mr." Casimir Pulaski was not a count. Aloysius A. Mazewski, president of the Polish National Alliance of the United States, says "There are no counts, marquises or barons in Poland. The parliament of Poland prohibited such titles in early 15th cen-
tury acts. The Commonwealth's
landed gentry was democratic." Pulaski was given the title of "Count" in America, Mr. Mazewski suggests, because other general officers from
Europe who served in George Wash-
-- ington's army were titled Marquis
de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben. The young Casimir Pulaski soon


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became one of the leading guerrilla warfare commanders in the Polish
confederacy. When he was 22 he was
elected marshal of Poland's fighters
for freedom. Two years later he was
acclaimed as a national hero when he defeated overwhelming Russian
forces at Czestochowa. Pulaski's band was never large but he learned
how to make use of the terrain in
partisan fighting and developed into a superb strategist. The Russians began to fear him, and fearing him, wanted him out of the way. They were able to force him into exile in 1773.
For the next three years, in the Balkans and Turkey, he struggled to
organize military action against the
Russians. He failed. Disheartened, he came to Paris in November 1776. He listened to the talk about the
American colonies fighting for their freedom. In exile, unable to put together a force to battle for independence in his own country, he started
looking across the sea. There, he could contribute to a struggle for
liberty.
Already known to the French
Court as an outstanding military leader, he was recommended to Benjamin Franklin, then in Paris,
who was looking for volunteers to serve the American cause. Franklin gave Pulaski letters of recommenda-
tion to the Continental Congress and to General George Washington. Arriving in America in July 1777, Pulaski was introduced to Washington by Lafayette. At the time, Pulaski did not understand English but before long he had learned enough of the language to write letters to the
Continental Congiess. Assuming temporary command of Washing-
ton's cavalry detachment, Pulaski saved Washington's army supplies at the Battle of Brandywine by repuls-
ing a British attack. The Continental Congress commissioned him a brigadier general and gave him command of four light cavalry regiments. Pulaksi, however, was dissatisfied with the minor role assigned to the cavalry. He resigned his commission as commander of the cavalry corps and
submitted a plan for the formation of an independent corps of cavalry and light infantry. Washington endorsed

the plan and it was approved by the Continental Congress, with Pulaski retaining his rank as brigadier general. The Independent Corps, soon known as Pulaski's Legion, fought
skirmishes in New Jersey and the
surrounding area until February
1779, when the Legion was ordered
to the southern theater of operations to join Major General Benjamin Lincoln's army.
Pulaski and a handful of his Legion were first to make contact with the French force headed for Savan-
nah commanded by that tall, elegant,
tireless, gallant, ambitious, courageous, high living gambling man, descendant of a family entitled to wear the coat of arms of France, that tres lumt et tres puissant seigneur,
Charles-Henri, Comte d'Estaing,
Vice Admiral of France, Lieutenant General of the Armies of the King,
Chevalier of the Orders, Comman-
der-in-Chief of the Forces of His
Most Christian Majesty in America.
On September 8, d'Estaing's great
-- French fleet had showed up off the
coast of Georgia -22 sail of the line,
-- 10 frigates and other ships carrying
thousands of troops up from the West Indies to help Americans destroy Britain's military power in the
Southern colonies. And "the key to
the southern provinces," wrote Brit-
ish Chief Justice Anthony Stokes, was Savannah. However, the sudden and unexpected appearance of the mighty French naval force shocked the small British garrison in Savannah, ill-prepared as it was for an attack from such a powerful antagonist. But the French armada galvanized the Americans in South Carolina. General Lincoln, commanding the Southern Department, hastily
concentrated his available forces to join the French in the attack on Savannah.
As Judge Lawrence writes in Storm Over Savannah, "Little love was lost
between the French and the Americans." The mutual disesteem started at the top, between Count d'Estaing and General Lincoln, a grave, pious
New Englander. Lincoln was a pati-
ent soul, and he needed to be, for M. le Comte was an imperious man with a tongue like a lash. Lincoln remonstrated with d'Estaing for demanding

that the British surrender to the arms of the King of France with not a word about the Continental Congress.
D'Estaing might have asked how the British could surrender to an army which had not yet arrived. By Sep-
tember 13, the French vanguard had advanced to a road-crossing three miles from Beaulieu, the French beachhead 3 1 miles below Savan-
nah. On the 14th or 15th, d'Estaing
and Pulaski met near Beaulieu and "cordially embraced," according to Captain Paul Bentalou, who was there. By September 16, 2,000 French troops were three miles from Savannah. That's the day d'Estaing ordered the British commander, Major General Augustin Prevost, to surrender. Prevost, called "Old Bullet
Head," was an old soldier who bore
near his temple an unsightly scar
from a wound received when he was serving under Wolfe at Quebec. While known as a man of courage, Prevost was not considered especially forceful in Georgia. He was, however, adroit enough to stall the pow-
erful French force that threatened to
overrun his smaller garrison. He
asked for terms and more time to
consider the question of surrender, suggesting a truce of 24 hours.
D'Estaing granted the request. The
British wasted not a minute. Dirt flew and sweat poured as they dug in, entrenching themselves. But what bolstered the British far more than
the time they had won by the truce
was the arrival, that very day of the 16th, of Lieutenant Colonel John Maitland of the 71st Regiment of Scotch Foot and his 900 veteran troops, down from Beaufort to beef up His Majesty's defense forces in Savannah. Maitland, his right sleeve empty for 20 years since a cannon ball carried away that arm in a victory over the French in Spain, came from an illustrious family of Scotland. Beloved by his Highland warriors, admired by friends and respected by foes, Colonel Maitland
was a man of tall personal and military stature, a man of raw courage,
whose Scottish burr was strong in the reply from the British council of war to d'Estaing's demand to capitulate.
A little before the expiration of the
truce, General Prevost said no.

20

Outdoors \t) Georgia

--

General Lincoln's American force came up during the 16th, and the Allies started entrenching them-
selves. Many observers wondered why d'Estaing had not attacked the
British earlier. Hessian Captain Johann Hinrichs, with his dispas-
sionate military eye, asked "Why did
he not on the 1 3th, or at least on the morning of the 16th, storm and take this miserable sand pile with fixed
bayonets?" To Hinrichs it was "in-
conceivable" that d'Estaing permitted the "slightest delay after the
12th." They say that the truce granted the British was incomprehensible to Colonel Francis Marion.
The usually quiet Swamp Fox was said to have bellowed "Who ever
heard of a thing like this before
first allow an enemy to entrench, and
then fight him." D'Estaing could reply that he was
not ready for an earlier attack in
force. Many of his troops were not
ashore. The Americans, on the march from South Carolina, had been held up in crossing the Savannah River because flats from Augusta had not arrived on time and a flat had to be built.
For the rest of September the Allies erected batteries and extended their entrenchments closer to the
British. On October 1, a ship can-
nonade on Savannah was loosed and on the 3rd, French batteries started bombarding the city, causing consid-
erable loss of life among men, women
and children. There was widespread damage. The bombardment lasted
five days.
When d'Estaing's decision to at-
tack in force came, the decision was itself subject to attack by French of-

ficers, but as Judge Lawrence writes "It was useless to argue with Monsieur le Comte." General Lincoln
acquiesced in the plan of attack. On
the morning of the 9th, at 2 o'clock, d'Estaing reviewed his troops. Shortly after daybreak, 3,000 Allied fight-
ing men hit the British lines. They sustained heavy losses. Count d'Estaing was wounded twice. According to David Ramsay the historian, Major Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina and Major Maciej Rogowski of the Pulaski Legion who in his mem-
oirs said he carried Pulaski from the
battlefield, Pulaski fell while leading
a cavalry charge on the British lines. D'Estaing said that Pulaski's death was "an infinitely great loss to the American cause." Six o'clock, 9 October 1 779: The Allied order to retreat comes. The carnival of death ends. The attack has failed. The British hold Savannah.

"The failure of the bloody assault by the French and American forces upon the British lines on October 9th, 1779, in which General Pulaski was mortally wounded, affected the whole course of the American Revolution." So writes Judge Alexander A. Lawrence in his Storm Over Sa-
vannah, the source for the account of the attack in this sketch of the
battle and of Pulaski. Judge Lawrence quotes the Royal Governor of Georgia at the time, Sir James Wright: "I clearly saw that if this Province then fell, America was lost ..." Judge Lawrence continues: "With good cause the defeat of the Allies at Savannah was celebrated in London by the firing of the Tower
guns and at New York with parades. Had Georgia been lost, the only foot-
hold remaining to George III in his American colonies would have been
the city of New York. British morale
was tremendously boosted by the victory at Savannah which steeled the Ministry in its decision to continue the effort to subdue America . . . Three cruel years of civil war that followed in Georgia and the Carolinas might have been spared if Savannah had fallen to the Allies in 1779."
The Georgia town of Pulaski and county oj Pulaski, and Ft. Pulaski near Savannah, are all named in honor of the general.
Photos by Bob Busby

July 1976

21

\/
200 Years of Wildlife
By Dick Davis Art by Mike Nunn

A sportsman's lot in colonial America was good and game was plentiful, but there were some drawbacks

^ertainly we have all wondered what game roamed the woodlands of the South in the
1 700's, what species were present then that are not here now, what it was like to travel and
camp and hunt in the virgin forests of the frontier and the untamed wilderness.
What hunter among us has not waited on a
deer stand and envisioned what it was like to roam the woods and trails of early America.
Georgia in 1768-1776 was geographically and demographically a land of vast wilderness

and few people. Habitation, trade, commerce and government were centered along the coastal area. Inland from the coastal settlements, Georgia in 1776 was largely virgin territory for the white man. The frontier was close at hand but poorly defined. Isolated pockets of settlements were spotted and
.
stabbed into the wilderness. In colonial times the environment of Georgia
and the South had not been markedly affected

by the colonists. Man had not yet
had time or numbers to disrupt the cycle of nature. Communities, settlements and even the towns and cities of 1776 were minute compared to
the megalopolises of today, the entire Southland was predominantly
rural, and as one moved inland from the coastal areas there was only the
wilderness, at times both friendly and hostile, but always challenging.
Man's influence had not yet
brought imbalance in nature. Natural wildlife predators held the various species in balance with available cover and food; occurrences such as wild forest fires provided renewed undercover vegetation for wildlife forage and did what controlled burning does now; streams, rivers and lakes ran clear, pure and were their
own waste-treatment facility. The red
man's use of the land did not abuse it, as the fast-increasing populations
of the white man were to do. The paleface poacher had not yet
appeared. Not yet begun were the commercial slaughters of some wildlife species which were to occur as the frontier moved west.
Some of our best sources of infor-
mation on Georgia's wildlife, the flora and fauna of the mid-1700's, are the descriptions of the travels of famed naturalists John and William Bartram.
John Bartram's "Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida 1765-66," William Bartram's "Travels in Georgia and Florida, 1773-74," and "The Travels of William Bartram" edited by
Mark Van Doren are storehouses of
descriptions of southeastern animal and plant life in the early days of America.
We know that game was usually in
-- abundance- both John and William
Bartram repeatedly tell of living off their harvest of game and fish in their travels. John Bartram often had "fresh meat in the shape of Deer, Bear and Wild Turkey" and "the rivers and lakes afforded an unlimited supply of fish that was no doubt frequently drawn upon."
On one of the islands off "Savanna"
--in the Spring of 1773 possibly it
-- -- was Skidaway Island William Bar-
tram mentions that "the tyger, wolf

and bear hold yet some possession as
also raccoons, foxes, hares, squirrels,
rats and mice, but I think no moles. There is a large ground rat, more
than twice the size of the common Norway rat . . . Opossum are here in
abundance, as also are pole-cats,
wild-cats, rattlesnakes, the glass-
snake, the coach-whip snake and a
variety of other serpents."
A partial list of major wildlife spe-
cies in southern colonial America includes most that are known today,

I

A FIRE-HUNT IX

such as deer, turkey, squirrel, rac-
coon, and many more. Also mentioned are forms that are now ex-
tinct: the passenger pigeon, wolf, cougar (tyger) and others that are
-- rare the bear, bald eagle and golden
eagle.
Were elk and buffalo in Georgia in the Middle 1700's? According to
William Bartram, writing of one of his visits to our state, "The buffalo once so very numerous, is not at this day to be seen in this part of the

24

Outdoors it? Georgia

--

The early settlers took game in the most expedient manner possible. They felt that nature's bounty was
limitless.

SGI A.
country; there are but few elk, and those only in the Appalachian mountains. The dreaded and formidable rattlesnake is yet too common, and a variety of other serpents abound, particularly that admirable creature, the glass snake ..."
The Georgia coastal areas, from St. Mary's and Cumberland Island north to "Savanna" and Skidaway were doubtless a second heaven for
waterfowl. Ducks, brant, geese and rails no

doubt streamed into the almost limitless coves, bays and marshes of the state's coastline. Canada Geese were seen in great numbers during the migratory season along the salt water banks of the state.
In the agriculture of the plantations
and smaller farms which stretched inland along the sea coast, waterfowl found good feeding grounds as they
moved north and south in the fly-
ways.
The sounds and inlets of Georgia's

coastal islands abounded with an almost endless list of game fish and other species and shellfish, crabs, shrimp and clams. As William Bartram tells it, "the coasts, sounds, and inlets environing these islands, abound with a variety of excellent fish, particularly Rock, Bass, Drum, Mullet, Sheepshead, Whiting, Grooper, Flounder, Sea Trout (this last seems to be a species of Cod), Skate, Skipjack, Stingray. The Shark, and
great black Stingray are insatiable
cannibals, and very troublesome to the fishermen. The bays and lagoons are stored with oysters, and a variety of other shell-fish, crabs, shrimp. The
clams, in particular, are large, their
meat white, tender and delicate." In the 200 years of our nation's
history much has happened to our game populations. Many of the oc-
currences and the results have been to our discredit, but during the past four decades we have, in most of the
Southeast, made significant gains in rebuilding and stabilizing our game
populations, in achieving dramatic
increases in numbers of some species such as the whitetail deer, and in
halting the rush to extinction of oth-
ers. It is believed by many that there are now more deer in Georgia than
during the days the Indians attracted
deer to the "game pastures" around their villages. These "game pastures" were burned-off areas near the vil-
lages.
Unfortunately, some of the species which were to be seen in the southern woodlands in colonial times have either disappeared forever, been
forced to flee to other areas of the
North American Continent, or been so reduced in numbers as to have been brought to the brink of extinction. Notable among these are the passenger pigeon, which fell to unregulated commercial shooting in the late 1 800's; the cougar or panther
-- "painter" or mountain lion which
was reduced almost to extinction be-

July 1976

25

Besides unregulated hunting,
industrial progress and the demand for raw materials from field and forest were consuming wildlife
habitat. Market scene, courtesy, Georgia Department of Archives and History.
The frontier-ethic persisted into the early twentieth century. Success was still measured by the weight of the bag, and the most game "belonged" to whoever could get the most.

cause of its reputation as a livestock
predator and man attacker; the alligator, now a fully protected species
which, though apparently making a rapid comeback, was ruthlessly hunted almost to the point of extinction for its valuable hide; and the ivory-billed woodpecker which was found only in very remote areas and is feared extinct because of habitat
destruction.
The cougar or "painter" was probably always rare in many parts of Georgia though it was commonly seen in the mountainous areas of some states until about 1850. The presence of the cougar tended to be cause for alarm and this may have
contributed to its being eliminated in
some areas. The wolf like the cougar was prob-
ably reduced in numbers by the early

wilderness settlers in eastern Georgia
in the 1700's, for much the same
reason.
These two species obviously made a big impression on the early settlers, as evidenced by the fact that we have such place names as Panther Creek, a community of Tiger and Wolfpen Gap.
Those who have studied the his-
tory of wildlife in Georgia report that there was a tremendous decimation
of many wildlife species in the South beginning shortly after John Bartram traveled Georgia and continuing un-
til approximately 1850.
When the frontier cabin dweller of
the 1770's went forth hunting to seek meat for his table he probably had a wide variety of choices.
Even in that day as now, the whitetail deer was prime big game and in

sufficient abundance to provide many
a fine feast and help stock the smoke-
houses.
Rabbits and squirrels could be taken readily by hunters and were
probably a staple in many fall and
-- winter diets. The wild turkey which had been a menu feature at the Pilgrims' first
-- Thanksgiving was the principal
course for many a meal consumed
by colonial Americans.
How did hunting as practiced in
America of the Revolutionary era compare with the sport today? One can only speculate.
There is a tendency to think that successful hunting in the colonial Southland was easy, what with game abounding and hunting limited to a comparative few.
This may be an erroneous assump-

26

Outdoors \t) Georgia

tion. To take wild game in the days of the original 13 colonies may have
equalled or exceeded the challenge the hunter faces today.
Habitat was almost limitless: cover, food and escape areas stretched in almost every direction. Today, these areas are limited; sometimes severe-
ly. Game that once encountered man
could flee almost endlessly. Encoun-
ters with man probably produced in
wildlife a far greater psychological
effect than in the game of today.
Wildlife living today encounters
man in some way or ways almost from birth. Man and his civilization
--his actions, his noises and his -- wastes are a part of the environ-
ment of most wildlife. The frequency

and multiplicity of wildlife's encoun-
ters with man probably condition wildlife to some degree of accommodation with man and thus make game
more prone to remain in proximity to man. Thus, once the hunter in this
bicentennial year enters an area of
game habitat, wildlife possibly may be more readily stalked and taken to-
day than in the days of the continen-
tal rebellion.
Another big advantage enjoyed by today's hunter is the variety and sophistication of weapons. The .3030 and .30-06 with scope are a far cry from the flintlocks and muzzle loaders of colonial America.
-- The mounted fox hunt riding to -- the hounds is a type of hunting that
became a colonial classic and has continued to this day as much a social highlight as an outdoor sport.
Primarily a sport of the aristocracy,
the quarry then, as now, was the gray
or the red fox.
How did they fish in the 1770's in
Georgia?
William Bartram vividly describes one method: "They are taken with a hook and line, but without any bait.
Two people are in a little canoe, one
sitting in the stern to steer, and the other near the bow, having a rod ten or twelve feet in length, to one end of which is tied a strong line, about

twenty inches in length, to which are fastened three large hooks, back to back. These are fixed very securely, and covered with the white hair of a deer's tail, shreds of a red garter, and some parti-coloured feathers, all which form a tuft or tassel, nearly as large as one's fist, and entirely cover and conceal the hooks: this is called a bob. The steersman paddles softly, and proceeds slowly along shore, keeping the boat parallel to it, at a distance just sufficient to admit the fisherman to reach the edge of the
floating weeds along shore; he now ingeniously swings the bob backwards and forwards, just above the
surface, and sometimes tips the water with it; when the unfortunate cheated trout instantly springs from under the weeds, and seizes the supposed prey. Thus he is caught without a possibility of escape, unless he breaks the hooks, line, or rod, which he, however, sometimes does by dint of strength; but, to prevent this, the fisherman used to the sport, is careful not to raise the reed suddenly up, but jerks it instantly backwards, then steadily drags the sturdy reluctant fish to the side of the canoe, and with a sudden upright jerk brings him into it."
Such was the outdoors wildlife of
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall and
George Walton, Georgia's signers of the Declaration of Independence. Such was the Georgia wildllife scene when on a hot summer day in far away Philadelphia these three Georgians joined with others in pledging "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" to give birth to our nation whose 200th anniversary we
celebrate in this bicentennial year. &

Many creatures, driven to the edge
of extinction in the early 1900s, have been brought back by scientific wildlife management.
White-tailed deer, wild turkey, wood duck and other species, once very rare, are now abundant. Continuing wildlife management programs and
regulated hunting pressure are safeguards for their future.

July 1976

27

:
\> f}\,
#*u

^Voy^ge* of

By Bill Hammack
Photography by Bob Busby
The sight of a tall sailing ship may arouse
your wanderlust or appeal to the romantic in you or just pleasure your eyes with the ship's
grace and beauty. What the sight of the brig
Unicorn, heading up the Savannah River past Cockspur Island with her sails furled and her
masts and yards silhouetted against a warm blue morning sky, aroused in Bob Busby the photographer and me was an urgency to get on board because that was our mission and we didn't have much time since Unicorn had
A showed up early. tall sailing ship can make a
man seem to hear her siren song beckoning him to come along with the wind to supposedly enchanted places far across the sea. What Busby and I actually heard as we leaped onto Unicorn's
deck from the pilot boat was the quiet thrum of
the sailing vessel's throttled-back 500-horse-
power auxiliary diesel nudging her through the water. It sounded sweet to us for we had made it aboard the ship, with the help of the Savannah
pilots.
Captain William T. Brown, master pilot of Savannah, had granted permission for us to board a pilot craft that would take us out to
Unicorn. Ellison Council, chief dispatcher of
Savannah Bar Pilots, told us one Monday morn-
July 1976

ing to hasten to the pilot station on Cockspur
since Unicorn had made better time than expected. Barry Godwin, captain of the motor vessel Savannah Pilot, and Bubba Fitzgerald, engineer, gunned us alongside the sailing ship and Busby and I jumped aboard Unicorn over her gleaming polished mahogany deck rail.
Unicorn, out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, is a
brig of 280 tons, 140 feet overall, bigger than the 200-ton, 100-foot Savannah, first steamship to cross the Atlantic, who paddlewheeled downriver from this Georgia seaport in 1819 wearing a plume of black smoke spangled with sparks like fireflies to sound the commercial death knell of brigs like Unicorn and clippers and all
the other ships that rode the wind.
With 27 sails. Unicorn carries a total of 7,800
feet of sail on board. She can make 6 or 8 knots. The figurehead on her prow illustrates her name.
It is the head of a unicorn. "Friend of mine who's a sculptor carved it for me," says Jacques Thiry, captain of the ship. "Carved it out of an old
-- beam from the Fulton Fish Market in New
York." The painted carving is authentic the
figurehead has the blood-red horn shading into
-- -- white at the tip and the blue eyes of the unicorn.
Unicornis fahularis. Brigs brigantines are
29

full-rigged ships with two masts. "Their history
goes back for centuries," says Captain Thiry. "They were sea workhorses for hundreds of
years, fading from the commercial picture in the
early 1900's. There are maybe four or five left
in the world. Two are in museums. And here is Unicorn, still working. Why did brigs fade out? It takes a minimum of 12 men to handle this ship. And that comes to just too much wages for
a ship this size to move cargo profitably."
Unicorn is Captain Thiry's dream.
Question: Captain Thiry, arc you married?
Captain Thiry: Yes. To this ship. Jacques Thiry is a bearded 36-year-old man
born in France and raised in the United States
who has always loved the sea. The first craft he ever sailed on, when he was a small boy, belonged to his grandfather. Her name was Unicorn. When Jacques Thiry bought a Finnish ship

named Lyra in 1971 he changed her name. "Lyra meant nothing to me," he says. "Unicorn
does."
He also changed her rigging. The ship was
born as a two-masted schooner in 1948 in Fin-
land. "Finnish economy had been shattered in
World War II," said Thiry. "The Finns needed
ships for commerce as they struggled to get back on their feet. Finland had no money but she did have great forests. So the Finns built sailing ships of wood from her trees. The Lyra, out of Sibbo, worked for 23 years as a commercial vessel. I liked her but I always wanted to sail a
square-rigger. I decided to build my own." He changed the schooner Lyra to the brig
Unicorn in Sweden during 1971 and 1972. He freighted around the Caribbean, up and down Central America, for more than a year, then
sold the ship to William Wycoff Smith of Philadelphia. The Smith family trust leased the vessel to the Florida Ocean Sciences Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping youthful
-- offenders in trouble with the law young men -- in their teens turn themselves around. The
Institute uses the sea to modify behavior and teach work habits, not necessarily to train young
-- men only in nautical skills like seamanship and
diving while they learn these, they're also
trained in other employable areas. "Most of them do well," says Kerry Dale Clemmons of Associated Marine Institutes, the federation of which the Institute is a part. "Most of them turn into good kids. I'd put 'em up against anybody."
Captain Jacques Thiry

30

Outdoors ip Georgia

Thiry agrees. During the past one and a half years under his direction Institute students
stripped Unicorn down and rebuilt the ship from the keel up. Some of the members of his 1 2-man
crew are Institute graduates. His 10 cadets on
board are still in Institute training. He runs an
-- exceedingly taut ship. His officers are cut of the
same tough sailcloth Bill Emery, the first mate; Jeffrey Berry, the sailing master; Jim Schirmer, the engineer, and Bruce Craven, the assistant
-- sailing master. Most of the officers and crew are
bearded one reason this is a hairy bunch is because they were asked to grow whiskers for
the ABC-TV movie "Roots," a saga of the 1 8th
century that was filmed around Savannah. "Roots" is from the book by Alex Haley about his search for his African ancestors. Unicorn
TV plays the role of a slave ship skippered by
star Edward Asner.
On this voyage to Georgia, the brig played a starring role in "Op Sail 76 Savannah," part of
"Operation Sail "76," a national bicentennial program which brought tall sailing ships from
all over the world to New York City harbor on the Fourth of July this year. Op Sail 76 Savan-
July 1976

nah, headed by retired banker Mills B. Lane, hosted a parade of wind ships visiting the Georgia seaport this summer, like the full-rigged Danmark, the Danish Navy's sail training ship, and Canada's Bluenose II, replica of the renowned racing schooner, a 143-footer carrying 12,000 square feet of sail, with a mainmast towering 130 feet.
Second windjammer to arrive for Op Sail 76 Savannah, Unicorn lazed up the river after
her swift passage from Florida. We met the
tanker Chancellorsville, out of Wilmington,
headed downriver and out to sea again. We
passed the statue of Florence Martus, who became a Savannah legend. Born on Cockspur
Island in 1868, sister of a lighthouse keeper,
-- she fell in love with a young seaman--so the
story goes and when he sailed away, she promised to wave at every ship entering the harbor so that her greeting would be the first to welcome him when he came back. Her beloved never returned. But Miss Martus, faithful to her promise, for more than 40 years waved a handkerchief by day and a lantern by night as greeting to every incoming vessel. The Waving Girl of Savannah became known wherever sailors went the world over, from Rangoon to Singapore, from Liverpool to Melbourne. She died in 1943. Her statue still waves to ships coming in from the sea. As Unicorn moved upriver, in the
distance ahead of us were the twin spires of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist reaching
toward heaven, the blue-green dome of City Hall
and farther on, the green tracery of the Tal-
madge Memorial Bridge against the blue sky. Past the tugboats of the Atlantic Towing Com-
pany, where the vigorous old towboat Cynthia, an Associated Press dispatch boat in the SpanishAmerican War, was moored with some of her younger and brawnier mates, tugboats like the big Savannah and Frank W. Spencer, we eased toward Unicorn's destination, a dock near Ships
of the Sea Museum. The brig and her captain and crew were welcomed by Savannah Mayor
John P. Rousakis and his executive assistant Al Henderson; Joseph H. Moore, director of the
Ships of the Sea Museum, and Mills Lane and
the Op Sail committee and some other citizens.
Perhaps the little cruise that Bob Busby and I made on Unicorn, brief as it was, may have been
enough to bring a whisper of the siren song of a tall sailing ship to our ears. The sea is pitiless and a sailing vessel is a demanding mistress, but if I were a skinny lad again, maybe . . . e?
31

Letters
to tl?e Editor
-- I seldom write to editors only -- send scripts and cuss them but this
is a sociable letter from the old
"Injun."'
First, I want to tell you I think
Outdoors in Georgia has been 100%
improved in last couple of years. Format, color, photos, diversity of material and factual data have made it into a top state mag. I used to think S. Carolina Wildlife was about the best I received (I get 8 state outdoor mags), but your new Outdoors is rapidly forging ahead, and it's good reading for all segments of our outdoor-minded public. Keep it coming.
Second, I want to start pushing
more Georgia fishing in my local column. Many of our Augusta read-
ers do not realize the varied types
of fishing in Georgia, or the areas they are located, and all within short distances.
Wally Walworth
Sec./Treas.
Georgia Outdoor Writers
Association
***
The February issue of Outdoors in Georgia has made the rounds at Coleman, and we have all admired the fine photos of the Coleman lantern which appear with your article "The Night Stalkers."
I understand that the practice of
covering the globes with aluminum foil for flounder fishing goes back a long way, and no doubt helped inspire the floodlight reflector which Coleman now makes for our 220 and 228 lanterns to direct lantern light. These were discontinued for a time, but are now back in the Coleman
accessory line.
Congratulations on a nicely done story. While I have never been flounder gigging, your story makes it sound like something I'd like to do.
Katie McMullen
Public Relations
The Coleman Company, Inc.

I look forward each month to the arrival of OIG. It is a fine magazine
of which I, a native Georgian, am
proud.
I am puzzled over one thing, though. You used to print, on a regu-
lar basis, the schedule for the man-
aged trout streams. Why did you
stop? Since I enjoy fishing in the
Warwoman and other areas, I need these schedules to aid me in picking the correct days for me to visit.
Keep up the good work. Frank Thomas, Jr.
Augusta, Georgia
***
Here are some statistics that might be of interest to people who are willing to work toward increasing the wood duck population.
In 1973 my three brothers, a cou-
ple of friends and I began a project that has truly been an interesting and
rewarding experience. We placed a
wood duck nesting box in L. A. Willis' 6 acre pond near Little River.
Results were positive. In February of 1975 we placed 15 more boxes, and
during March of this year we added
A another 21. total of 37 nest sites,
all located in the same pond. Ducks nested and raised each year
in the box that we placed in 1973. The 15 that we placed in 1975 were
all used but one. We completed our
annual check on May 8th this spring
and found eggs in 25 of the 37 boxes.
A conservative estimate from our
observations is that seven ducklings hatched and left each nest each year they were used. That figure would give us a total hatch out of 291 since
1973 and 263 of them in 1975 and 1976. One box that we checked on
May 8th had 1 1 freshly hatched
ducks. The next day, ten of them had left the nest; one was dead.
Our greatest problem is with snakes. In 1975 we killed three that were inside the boxes and one outside. This spring we killed two more that were in the boxes. All of them had swallowed eggs. The most swallowed was three.
This spring we nailed 18" aluminum strips around some of the trees. Both snakes found this spring were in boxes that we had supposed would
be predator proofed by using the aluminum.

Nests built from 8" lumber were

used as readily as the ones built with
12" lumber. We did not "clean out"

the nests after the 1975 nesting sea-

son, and it made no difference. How-

ever, we will clean them out this fall

and refill with clean shavings.

Boxes back-to-back on one tree,

or over each other on the same tree,

were nested in. One structure was

made from some scrap cypress, and

it had four separate units side by

side. Both outside nests were used in

1975 and 1976.

1 offer a word of caution to the

spring and summer record keeper.

Duck boxes are ideal sites for wasps

My to build their nests, also.

respect

for them kept me out of serious trou-

ble when I began to open the top on

a box filled with angry wasps.

If you enjoy duck hunting and

have an appreciation for wildlife,

constructing and placing wood duck

nesting boxes and observing the ac-

tivity is simply a way of deepening

and extending your enjoyment for 12

months instead of about two months.

Bud Willis

Moultrie, Georgia

32

Outdoors \t) Georgia

Corpip Next Moi?tl>...
State Bird. Len Foote profiles the brown thrasher, Georgia's State Bird, and recounts the history of its selection.
Six Lonely Graves. At Andersonville Historic Site, six graves lie apart from the main graveyard. Howard Bushnell's story explains why these
men were separated from their fellows..
Sea Serpents. There are many dangers in the sea according to Jingle Davis. The really dangerous ones are those which injure hundreds of
vacationers each year and yet are seldom reported.
The House of Vann. James Vann was a powerful figure in the Cherokee nation. No simple savage, he lived in a brick mansion on his plantation. Susan Wood takes us there in August OIG.

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