43 



altogether confined to the British troops ; our own people, of bad char, 

 acter, emerged from their hiding places in the swamps, and appropriated 

 to their own use whatever came in their way. This state of things more 

 or less continued until Governor Rutledge returned to the South, and by 

 his influence and abilities restored order and security of property. 



Within two iniles of the spot on which Lord Cornwallis pitched his 

 camp at Silk Hope, stands, or it ought rather to be said, stood, at that 

 time, the ancestral residence of the Harleston family. It was then a 

 noble building, the abode of Major Isaac Childs Harlestou, a gentleman 

 of fortune, surrounded " by all the means, and appliances to boot," of a 

 well stocked and productive estate. What a melancholy contrast it ex- 

 hibits now to its former condition. It has unhappily undergone the fate 

 of all sublunary things. Solitude its only portion ; the house roofless, 

 and crumbling into dust ; like Ophelia's violets, " its hopes seemed all to 

 wither when the old folks died." All is hushed about it ; nothing dis- 

 turbes the silence of the scene, save occasionally the song of the poor 

 Whip-poor-will, or a wild deer started from his form, stirring the boughs 

 with its branching antlers; the stillness as serene and unbroken as at 

 that hour when, as the ancients used so poetically to say, Pan sleeps, 

 and all nature holds her breath so as not to disturb him ! 



In contemplating the rude wilderness through which the visiter lias 

 now to pass in his approach to the old niansion from the high road, 

 thick as the thickets of Boboli, and woody as the woods of Cascini, de- 

 scending into a deep and thickly wooded dell, at the bottoni of which 

 runs a bold stream, frequently impassable from its swollen waters, it is no 

 wonder that Gen. Marion, though outnumbered by the enemy, felt secure 

 in such a neighborhood. Like the fastnesses of Cominius, in wdiich, 

 ■when the Romans were at war with the Tuscans, a party of the latter, 

 after a well fought battle, had set the former at defiance by retreatino- 

 into its forests, "these woods, and wilds, and melancholy glooms" could 

 not fail, in like manner, to aftbrd a safe retreat to a discomfited battalion 

 in the hour of its utmost need ! 



To this spot the ladies of the Harleston family retired, during the 

 troubles of the Revolution, supposing, from the solitariness of its situa- 

 tion that there, at least, they would escape many of the evils and incon- 

 veniences of the war. 



It being well known that Major Harleston had been extensively en. 

 gaged in breeding blood stock, and kept at this place his finest horses, 

 the celebrated Flimnap among the number, a very tempting bait Avas 

 thus offered to the British cavalry in the vicinity, commanded by Col. 

 Tarleton. Repeated efforts were made to get possession of this horse, 



