The Savannah (The Rivers of America Series)

xi, [1], 401, [1] pp. 8vo. Illustrated by Lamar Dodd. Two panel map precedes text. "Glamorous and romantic, the Savannah River is the heart and pulse of America's 'Deep South.' The enticing story of this river, here portrayed by one of Georgia's distinguished native sons, Thomas L. Stokes, is in the South's best tradition. Full and red with Georgia and Carolina earth, the mighty Savannah River, in its long journey from the Appalachians to the sea, drains one of the largest areas of any river in the United States that flows into the Atlantic. It is, by turns, a placid highway flowing between comfortable rows of neat houses and trees, and a wild jungle pathway, full of mystery and passion. In certain sections, tremendous gloomy trees sit knee-deep in marshes and eerie glassy stretches of water mirror the forbidding forest. The dark magic of the people of the Savannah's past haunts the river today. Four hundred years ago exotically colored Indians paddled up and down its reaches. But their peaceful life was suddenly and violently disrupted by DeSoto and an army of six hundred greedy Spaniards in search of gold. The French came, and the British, under the dreamer-statesman Oglethorpe, who arrived from England with a boatload of impecunious hopefuls. Interests clashed, and blood flowed freely on the Savannah. Its shores resounded with feuding and fighting, stirred up by colorful river characters like Mary Musgrove, 'Queen of the Creeks,' whose lusts and feminine fireworks kept the local menfolk in an uproar for many a year. The 'Avenging Angel' Sherman, 'King Cotton,' Jeff Davis, 'Pitchfork Ben' Tillman, and a host of other famous Southern personages, played important parts in the Savannah's great past. Mr. Stokes has told their story dramatically and with distinction."