He would go into the swamp, and for many years no one ever followed him, the other negroes being afraid to do so because of his temper and his strength.  At last, however, they did spy upon him and discovered that in the swamp there stood a cypress tree on which were strange rude carvings, before which he prostrated himself.  No one ever learned the exact significance of this, but it was assumed that the man practised some barbaric form of worship, brought from Africa.

* * * * *

The country back of Charleston is very lovely and is rich in interest, even though most of the houses on the old estates have been destroyed.  Drayton Hall, however, stands, and the old Drayton estate, Magnolia, not far distant from the Hall (which was on another estate), has one of the most famous gardens in the world.  Seven persons touching fingertips can barely encircle the trunks of some of the live-oaks at Magnolia; there are camellias more than twenty feet high, and a rose tree nearly as large, but the great glory of the garden is its huge azaleas—­ninety-two varieties, it is said—­which, when they blossom in the spring, are so wonderful that people make long journeys for no other purpose than to see them.

In “Harper’s Magazine” for December, 1875, I find an account of the gardens which were, at that time, far from new.  The azaleas were then twelve and thirteen feet tall; now, I am told, they reach to a height of more than twenty feet, with a corresponding spread.

“It is almost impossible,” says the anonymous writer of the article, “to give a Northerner any idea of the affluence of color in this garden when its flowers are in bloom.  Imagine a long walk with the moss-draped live-oaks overhead, a fairy lake and a bridge in the distance, and on each side the great fluffy masses of rose and pink and crimson, reaching far above your head, thousands upon tens of thousands of blossoms packed close together, with no green to mar the intensity of their color, rounding out in swelling curves of bloom down to the turf below, not pausing a few inches above it and showing bare stems or trunk, but spreading over the velvet, and trailing out like the rich robes of an empress.  Stand on one side and look across the lawn; it is like a mad artist’s dream of hues; it is like the Arabian nights; eyes that have never had color enough find here a full feast, and go away satisfied at last.  And with all their gorgeousness, the hues are delicately mingled; the magic effect is produced not by unbroken banks of crude reds, but by blended shades, like the rich Oriental patterns of India shawls, which the European designers, with all their efforts, can never imitate.”

Another remarkable garden, though not the equal of Magnolia, is at Middleton Place, not many miles away, and still another is at the pleasant winter resort town of Summerville, something more than twenty miles above Charleston.  The latter, called the Pinehurst Tea Garden, is said to be the only tea garden in the United States.  It is asserted that the teas produced here are better than those of China and Japan, and are equal to those of India.  The Government is cooeperating with the owners of this garden with a view to introducing tea planting in the country in a large way.