THE SOUTH CAROLINA PROBLEM; THE EPOCH OF TRANSITION. PORT ROYAL, in South Carolina, was once first cousin to Plymouth Rock, in Massachusetts. Both places were consecrated to liberty of conscience in the early days of American history. The rugged New England headland was the refuge and the fortress of the English Puritan; the fertile plain at the mouth of the broad and noble Carolinian river was the resort of the French Huguenot, who preferred exile and danger to the sacrifice of his faith. Jean Ribault and his hardy men-at-arms, sailing northward from the blooming banks of Florida, in 1562, anchored their ships during a great storm at the mouth of a "fair and large harbor," and named it, and the river emptying into it, Port Royal. The good Frenchmen who had been sent by brave old Admiral ColVOL. VIII.-9 igny to found an asylum for the oppressed in the New World, wandered delightedly along the shores of the stream, under mossgrown oaks and lofty pines, beneath the cedars and the palmettoes, and shaped visions of future glory. They pictured to. themselves the time when the waters of the vast harbor should be covered with noble fleets; when spacious gardens should cover the luxuriant shores; and, after a few days of repose, they raised a stately pillar of stone, with the arms of France graven on it, and, in honor of Charles IX., built a fort called Arx. Carolina on an island in the river. A little garrison was placed in charge, and Ribault returned to France, to recount with enthusiasm the wonders of that part of the then province of Florida, destined in future to be named, as the Frenchman had called his fort, Carolina. To-day, more than three centuries after Ribault's adventurous voyage, the site of the old fort and pillar is not even known definitely. Port Royal is an infant town just springing into commercial activity, under the influence of reviving commerce; and the negro slouchingly tills the soil and lounges in the sun on the shores from which the tide of revolution has swept his late master. In the sixteenth century, the country claimed in America by the Spaniards as Florida, and by the French as "New France," was supposed to extend from the Chesapeake to the "Tortugas," along the coast, and inland as far as the exploring foreigners might choose to penetrate. During many perilous years the States now known as Florida and South Carolina had a common history. The Huguenots continued their explorations until the treachery and murderous fury of the Spaniards had exterminated all of them who ventured into the Floridian lands; and had Menendez of Avila, the blackest villain whose liferecord blots the annals of American discovery, died in his cradle, South Carolina would, perhaps, at this day have been peopled by Protestant Gauls. The little settlement at Port Royal suffered many ills. The soldiers left by | Ribault, borne down by misfortune and sickness, determined to return home. The Indians aided the soldiers to construct a brigantine, with which the miserable men tried to make their way to France; but they were reduced to starvation on the voyage, and it was only after they had begun to eat each other, that the survivors were rescued by an English vessel. The settlement founded by Ribault was abandoned; and two years elapsed before another Huguenot expedition, led by Laudonniere, founded a settlement near the mouth of the river May, as the St. John's, prince of the streams of Florida, was then called. Had Laudonniere flourished, the Port Royal fort might have been rebuilt; but the Spaniards from St. Augustine fell upon both Laudonniere and the re-enforcements which Ribault had brought him, and in 1565 the second of Coligny's attempts was disastrous. Even the colossal vengeance which that preux chevalier, Dominique de Gourges, took upon the Spaniards in Florida, two years afterwards, did not reestablish French influence there; and no Huguenot came again to our Southern shores until one hundred and thirty years later, when the revocation of the edict of Nantes in France sent hundreds of the descendants of Coligny's followers to South Carolina. Their illustrious names are still borne by many worthy families in Charles ton. Under the "Palatinate" the development of the province now known as South Carolina was begun. Under a charter from the crown, after the restoration, all the lands lying between the 31st and the 36th degrees of north latitude, were granted to a proprietary government. The utmost religious liberty prevailed in the newly organized province. The constitution under which the noble dukes and earls who had received the charter proposed that their colonists should live, was framed by the philosopher, John Locke. The eldest of the "lords proprietors" was palatine; the seven other chief offices were admiral, chamberlain, chancellor, constable, chief justice, high steward and treasurer. The province was subdivided into counties, signories, baronies, precincts and colonies. Each signory, barony and colony consisted of twelve thousand acres, and it was provided that after a certain term of years the "proprietors" should not have power to alienate or make over their proprietorship, but that "it should descend unto their heirs male." Here was a good foundation for a landed aristocracy. Every freeman of Carolina was authorized to "have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves;" and no person could hold or claim any land in the province except from and under the "lords proprietors." The first attempt of the English experimenters to settle the country was at Port Royal, in 1670. William Sayle was appointed governor of the colony, and great inducements were offered to English immigrants. The first site of "Charlestown" was on the western bank of the Ashley river, and the estate where the first site was is still known as "Old Town." Subsequently the settlement was removed to Oyster Point, about two miles lower down, at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers. It was not until 1783 that the town was incorporated. The original expedition of the proprietary government cost twelve thousand pounds, and in the years between 1670 and 1682, a hundred houses were built at "Charlestown," and an ancient chronicler adds that many who went there as servants had become worth several hundreds of pounds, and lived in a very beautiful condition, with their estates still increasing. The constitution which Locke had framed after the pattern of Plato's model republic, was sufficient for the Carolinians only until 1693, and in 1719 Carolina put itself under the protection of King George. As a colony, a rapid development and a A PEEP THROUGH RUINS. large prosperity were experienced at once, and the people began to turn their attention to their superb material resources with a vigor never before manifested. One century after the granting of the charter by Charles the Second to the proprietors, Carolina had arisen to considerable commercial eminence. "Charlestown," Beaufort, Purysburg, Jacksonborough, Dorchester, Camden and Georgetown were the principal settlements, but no one, save the first, consisted of more than thirty or forty dwellings. The negroes, who had been introduced in great numbers as soon as the planting of rice became the chief industry of the colony, already outnumbered the whites. In Charleston they were as eight to five; and while the white population of the colony did not exceed forty thousand, the negroes numbered eighty or ninety thousand. At that time it was said of the whites that, "in the progress of society they had not advanced beyond that period in which men were | distinguished more by their external than internal accomplishments." They were chiefly known in England "by the number of their slaves, the value of their annual produce, or the extent of their landed estates." They were lively and gay; "all novelties in fashion, ornament and dress were quickly introduced, and even the spirit of luxury and extravagance, too common in England," was beginning to creep among them. It was said that "there were more people possessed of five and ten thousand pounds sterling in the province" than were to be found anywhere among the same number of persons. "Their rural The life and their constant use of before the time of the American revolution, the exports from "Carolina" in a single year amounted to £756,000 sterling; but the imports were so extensive that the colony remained indebted to the mother country. Still, the old English critics thought the Carolinians rather slovenly husbandmen, and were astonished at the manner in which they managed their estates. Freeholds of land were easily obtained by patent or purchase, and were also alienable at will; so that the system of husbandry was not carried on according to any established principles or plans. The planter ordinarily cleared a wooded tract, planted it with rice or indigo until it was exhausted, and then neglected it for a fresh location. Nowhere was the soil improved, nowhere were grass seeds sown for enriching the pastures, and the only study was the putting of the largest crop into market. Safe and prosperous, guaranteed royal protection, possessing unlimited credit and indulgence, and owning the labor necessary to produce wealth, the Carolinian of one hundred years ago seemed a most fortunate mortal, and his carelessness was accounted a princely quality. Port Royal Island and its chief town, Beaufort, are monuments to the disastrous effects of the revolution which has swept over South Carolina within the last generation. Everywhere on the chain of beautiful sea islands along the low coast one finds the marks of the overturn. But Port Royal, situated on the river terminating in what is perhaps the grandest harbor on the American coast, has hopes, and may bring new life to decaying Beaufort. The railroad has penetrated the low lands, creeping across marshes and estuaries upon formidable trestles, and now drains the rich cotton fields around Augusta, in Georgia, towards the Broad River. The town is laid out into lots, and the numbers of the avenues run ambitiously high already; an English steamship line has sent its pioneer vessel to the port; and the home government talks of establishing a navy-yard upon the stream. With commercial facilities, which neither New Orleans, Savannah, nor Norfolk can boast, Port Royal deserves a great future. The harbor which Ribault three hundred years ago enthusiastically described as so large that "all the argosies of Venice might safely ride therein," is certainly ample for the accommodation of the largest fleets known, and is easy and safe of access. The lowland scenery of South Carolina is as varied as tropical. From the sea the marshes, or savannahs, stretching seventy miles back from the coast, seem perfectly level; but there are in many places bluffs and eminences crowned with delicate foliage. A vast panorama of fat meadows, watered by creeks; of salt and fresh marshes; of river swamp lands of inexhaustible fertility, from which spring the sugar-cane and cypress; of the rich, firm soil, where the oak and the hickory stand in solid columns, and of barrens studded with thousands of young pines-salutes the eye. The innumerable branches which penetrate the low-lying lands from the sea have formed a kind of checker-work of island and estuary. The forests along the banks of the streams, and scattered on the hedges between the marshes, are beautiful. The laurel, the bay, the palmetto, the beech, the dogwood, the cherry, are overgrown with wanton, luxuriant vines, which straggle across the aisles where the deer and the fox still wander. In the spring the jessamine and the cherry fill the air with the perfume of their blossoms; in winter the noble oaks, in their garments of moss, and the serried pines, preserve the verdure which the other trees have lost, and give to the landscape an aspect of warmth and life. When the rice plantations are submerged, and the green plants are just showing their heads above the water, and nodding and swaying beneath the slight breeze passing over the hundreds of acres, the effect is indescribably novel and beautiful. Beaufort, in a soft, delicious climate, where the orange flourishes, is beautifully located, and was once the abode of hundreds of proud and wealthy planters. One reaches it by rail from Yemassee, a little junction in the midst of a pine forest, where the trains from Charleston, Savannah, Augusta, and Port Royal all meet at midday, and indulge in delays which in the North would be thought |