Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1894-08-15
.RATTLESNAKES PARADISE.
HALF AN ACRE OF THE
BEAUTIES IN MOTION.
EVERYBODY WEARS BOOTS
There is a Spot In Delaware
County Which No Rational
Man DareS Enter Unless
He Be Snake-PrOOf.


The creek comes rushing down
through ravine, at the head of
which was built dam for the
storage of water to furnish power
FLOR a sawmill, situated. on small
bluff On the river bank, which
manufactured into lumber the
|original forest nearly a century
ago. The land about the mill, per-
haps a half acre, was then thor
|oughly cleaned of stumps and
roots for the storage of logs and
manufactured lumber, and now
produces luxuriant growth of ma
Live grass. This cleared spot
reaches back to a perpendicular
cliff, fully 200 feet in height, Of
shale rock, divided into layers ly-
ing at an angle of about forty-fve
degrees. These layers of rock are
separated by crevices, appearing,
alta safe distance, to be about ten
inches in width, with a table a foot
wide extending in front Of each
crevlce, making the mountain-side
aiseries of steps twenty or twenty
FIVE feet apart.
These crevices, the depth and
area of which no man knows, are
the homes of the "rettlers";; the
ruins of the mill (known in The
legendary lore of that section as
Ithe9"old Blue Mill") and the dam
and the grass are their Fairgrounds.
Meeting native who had stopped
in at the signal tower, I made in
curry Of the cause Of the great
| g&~swh of grass; u andwhy the owner.
did not gather the hay. He first
asked me where hailed from, be-
cause of my seeming ignorance of
the snakes, and then said:
"say, mister, do you know there
amt no man on the river who'd
cut that grass Is you'd give him
this railroad? Why, man, that
grass hain't been cut in mine and
my fathers day, and it just grows
up and falls down year after year,
and the ground has a right to be
rich. I wear boots," (he had on
boots with the tops reaching to the
knee, but I wouldn't walk through
that grass for the best farm in this
county, for there's snakes there
with fifty buttons Oh their tail, I
don't doubt, and every button
means a year, and them big feliers
could strike way above your boot
tops"
"Do all the men hereabout wear
boots?" I asked.
81 should remark they did," he
said. "No women ever come about
here unless they walk on the rail-
read, and they shuttle by here
pretty rapid.
"Do you see them boots? They're
daisies !" pointing to the station
telegraph operator, whose neither
limbs, I then discovered, were in
cased in snuggly-ftting cavalry
boots. Everybody wears boots
but them Eyetalyuns that works
on the track, and a rattler thinks
too much of hisself to bother with
such critters.
"sayl Do you want to hear the
snakes sing2" Not waiting for an
answer, he ran down from the tower
to the railroad tank and threw a
good-sized stone over into the
thick growth of brush bordering
the shore of the creek, and in
stantly an alarm was sounded and
from the old mill and the dam and
the grass the war cry of defiance
and warning was ratified, and the
snakes in the dens in the cliff
took up the refrain" and for
fully ten minutes the air was filled
with the noise as of q million sew
enteen-year locusts singing their
native song.
"They're there, you see," he
smilingly remarked, as he turned
to walk away up the railroad track,
sand you'd better not fool with
Them"
I did not need any further sad
vice" than the snakes had already
given me, and I then made in