FORTIFIED village of MOUND-BUILDERS, GROUND-PLAN 14 16 PART OF MAP OF DRAKE'S VOYAGE, PUBLISHED BY J. HONDIUS SERGEANT HART NAILING THE COLORS TO FLAG-STAFF, THE BATTLE OF MANILA BAY THE CAPTURE OF THE BLOCK-HOUSE AT SAN JUAN CANAL PARTIALLY EXCAVATED MAPS NORTH AMERICA, 1750, SHOWING CLAIMS ARISING Facing p. 180 THE UNITED STATES, 1783, SHOWING CLAIMS OF THE 280 SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1775-1865 (Color) 438 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES I THE FIRST AMERICANS T happened to the writer more than once, during the American Civil War, to sail up some great Southern river that was to all appearance unvisited by the ships of man. It might well have been the entrance to a newly discovered continent. No light-house threw its hospitable gleam across the dangerous bar, no floating buoys marked the intricacies of the channel; the lights had been extinguished, the buoys removed, and the whole coast seemed to have gone back hundreds of years, reverting to its primeval and unexplored condition. There was commonly no sound except the light plash of waves or the ominous roll of heavy surf. Once only, I remember, when at anchor in a dense fog off St. Simon's Island, in Georgia, I heard a low, continuous noise from the unseen distance, more wild and desolate than anything else in my memory can parallel. It came from within the vast girdle of mist, and seemed as if it might be the cry of lost souls out of some Inferno of Dante; yet it was but the sound of innumerable sea-fowl at the entrance |