A Sportsman’s Paradise.—III. 
In this last article upon my visit to the Santee 
Club I wish to tell of the most wonderful and 
beautiful thing I have ever seen in all my life, a 
thing which could only be adequately described 
by the pen of a poet. 
At the head of the canal, where the club land¬ 
ing is situated, a wide brook pours a stream of 
clear fresh water into the muddy waters of the 
Santee River. Half a mile from its mouth this 
brook finds its source in the waters of The Re¬ 
serve, and it is about this Reserve that I wish 
to tell you. 
The word “reserve,” I presume, has come from 
a corruption of the word “reservoir,” for that 
is what the Reserve is; a long body of the purest 
water, nearly two miles and a half from end to 
end and varying in width from a hundred yards 
to half a mile. It is literally studded with 
cypress trees except in two places, each about a 
third of a mile and a quarter of a mile wide, 
and these two sheets of open water seem like 
two lakes within a lake. 
I had my first view of this wonderful specimen 
of nature’s handiwork as I drove to the turkey 
blind the day following my arrival, and I stopped 
the wagon upon the road where the vista of one 
of these lakes appeared. Surrounded by a forest 
of cypress trees and these garlanded with wreaths 
of pale green moss, with a few islands as it were, 
dotted here and there, the effect was marvelous. 
The moss grew from every gnarled limb and 
hung down in long streamers, reaching the sur¬ 
face of the water in many instances, and in 
others it had been caught up by the wind and 
wound around limb after limb. 
It seemed as if this place were the heaven 
where the mermaids go, and the graceful gar¬ 
lands of moss seemed to be made of their sea- 
green hair. To nothing else can I liken them, 
and I cannot describe the weird beauty of the 
scene as the unruffled surface of the black water 
reflected back the picture of the ghostly trees 
above. One sees the outline of the trunk and 
branches of the trees so indistinctly through the 
veil of moss that the whole thing seems un¬ 
real, as if it could only be a picture of the im¬ 
agination. Could an artist but reproduce this 
marvelous effect upon canvas, the whole world 
would gaze spellbound as I did. 
I determined to visit this enchanting spot and 
see more of its wonders, and was delighted to 
learn from my colored guide that it was the 
home of the alligator, the retreat of the all-too- 
rare woodduck and the breeding place of the 
egret. 
There came two days of very mild weather, 
the temperature rising to 70 degrees, which sadly 
interfered with our duck shooting, but it brought 
one compensation for me—the ’gators were out 
of their mud holes! The following day being 
a rest day, as far as the ducks were concerned, 
I greedily decided to use it for my visit of dis¬ 
covery in the Reserve. 
At 2 o’clock in the afternoon I set out with 
my colored guide for the dam at the head of 
the brook, I armed with a .30 rifle and he carry¬ 
ing a long pole with a hook at the end. This 
curious contrivance was to be used to recover 
the body of any alligator we killed—quite a neces¬ 
sity, for the beasts have a habit of sinking to 
the bottom when mortally hit. 
At the dam we found a narrow punt and I 
took my place in the bow, while the colored guide 
paddled in th£ stern. We glided slowly along 
through the forest of ghostly trees, winding 
about among the trunks to find room to pass, 
the quiet surface of the limpid black water look¬ 
ing like a sheet of the clearest ice. Over our 
SHILLUK WARRIORS OF THE UPPER NILE. 
heads and upon the branches of the trees count¬ 
less buzzards added to the weirdness of the 
scene, and the noise they made was the only 
sound that disturbed the quiet. 
Half a mile from the dam we came out into 
the clear place I had seen from the ro&d, and 
it was even more inspiring from the canoe. We 
skirted around the edge of this lake, keeping 
about one hundred yards from the fringe of 
trees, and suddenly my guide whispered, “ ’Gator 
on dat log over dar!” and he pointed to a fallen 
tree which lay half out of water. Try as hard 
as I could I could see nothing of the ’gator, and 
my man swung the canoe so as to keep a little 
island, consisting of three cypress trees, between 
us and our game. I motioned for him to get 
nearer and we paddled close up to the trees 
where I again tried to make out the ’gator. The 
log was nearly 200 yards away and I had finally 
to fire at a spot on the top of the log which was 
as near to the ’gator as I could guess from my 
guide’s excited directions, because it all looked 
like log to me. 
As my shot rang out I saw a portion of the 
log disappear and heard a splash. 
“Lordy, Lordy, you t’rowed him!” cried my 
excited guide, and he began to paddle furiously 
for the log. When we reached the spot he took 
up his pole to grope about the bottom for our 
prey, but I bade him put me alongside the log, 
for I was somewhat skeptical as to where that 
bullet went and wanted to see if I could find it 
in the log before wasting time hunting for that 
’gator on the bottom. After a moment’s care¬ 
ful search I found the bullet hole about one 
inch below the top of the log and my disap¬ 
pointed guide affirmed that it was directly under 
the spot where the ’gator had been resting at 
full length upon the log. My bullet had gone 
two inches too low, almost near enough to be 
called a good shot if one would only forget that 
I had no mark to aim at. 
We set out again, crossing the little lake and 
passing through another thickly grown part and 
then across the other lake. We had scarcely 
entered among the trees beyond this when 'an 
otter poked his head up in front of us as if to 
inquire who was disturbing him. My guide 
urged me to shoot him, but it seemed too easy 
a thing to do, and I felt that they were too rare 
an animal, so I let him go. 
We saw several alligators swimming slowly 
along with only their eyes showing above the 
water, and it was not until we had reached the 
further end of the Reserve that I got a chance- 
at one. About twenty feet from our boat a big 
’gator raised his head out of the water and I 
took a quick shot at him, but he was so close 
that I miscalculated the necessary depression of 
the' muzzle of my gun and shot into the water 
about a foot "this side of him. The bullet struck 
him, for we -saw a trail of blood, but we fol¬ 
lowed him in and out among the cypress trees 
for an hour without getting another chance, and 1 
he must have crawled into his winter home. 
The sun had gotten pretty well down by this 
time and my guide suggested that we ‘ return/ 
admitting that even he could not find his way 
back through the forest in the dark. So we 
started for home, gliding between the trees, dis¬ 
turbing the woodducks, the buzzards and many 
other fowl, and that wonderful trip ended in the 
pale light of the moon which seemed to add .tc 
the beauty and mystery of the scene. 
In the two weeks I spent at the Santee Clut 
I killed all the ducks I could use, wild turkey 
English snipe, quail, deer, wild boar, a wild bull 
and I could have killed woodduck and an otter 
not to speak of the alligators which I was stupicjj 
enough to miss. 
If there exists a happy hunting ground when 
all good sportsmen are to go, I pray that it maj| 
be patterned after the preserve of the Santee 
Club. Edwin Main Post. 
The Forest and Stream may he obtained from 
any newsdealer on order. Ask your dealer tt 
supply you regularly. 
