The Nome daily nugget., 1935-07-09

midst of a cathedral-like bower of
 live oaks, with hoary boards of
 Spanish moss depending from their outstretched limbs, stands majes | tic colonial home. Projecting from
 the porticoed entrance is a cruel
 form formal pool which catches
 and losses back the reflection of
 messy oaks and vast white walls.
 Since it's reconstruction, two
 Presidential parties have been guests at the mansion. One day,
 while one of First Ladies was ad.
 miring the nearby rock garden, her cicerone was heard to remark,
 '"rhey even used imported stone | for this rock garden"
 The big house of the South End | plantation was first built by Thom. as Spalding in 1S00-1S02, after he
 had returned from England to take
 up plantation farming on Sapelo. As noted a farmer as he was
 builder, Spalding cleared more than
 thousand acres on his island
 kingdom. and raised indigo, seals.
 land cotton. sugar cane, and staple | foodstuffs.
 He 1t was, in fact, who intro duced cane cultivation and sugar
 manufacturing into Georgia. The | live oaks which he cut while clear.
 ing the forests to make bigger
 fields served to fill large timber con. tracts for the budding United | States navy. He also supplied the
 navy and merchant marine with
 beef and hogs.
 AS slave owner, however, Spald-
 ing came ultimately to suffer, even though he treated his "helpers"
 with such kindness that the plant. CTS in the South dubbed Sapelo "Nigger Heaven"
 Then came the Confederacy,
 against every protest of this aged
 man. Sherman's march to the sea
 laid waste the big house and the plantation developments. Fortu-
 nately. Spalding did not live to see
 that day of ruin.
 Vines and bramble claimed the | fire-smoked tabby walls of the man. sion until the present owner cleared them and rebuilt again in 1925. Modern Improvements. Today, too, the old canals have
 been redredged and new ones have been cut in many places to supple ment the drainage of the island. An
 adequate supply of fresh water Is
 provided by 36 gushing artesian
 wells. More than thousand beef cattle now graZe on the luxuriant
 carpet grass, Japanese clover, and
 Bermuda grass that have been
 sown in the one-time cotton and in- digo fields.
 Delightful trails and motor roads lace the island retreat. In many places they wind beneath bewhis- kered old oaks; elsewhere they skirt the broad savannas and cross between marshy ponds that teem
 with ducks, teal, and other water | fowl.
 On the west shore, commanding the approach to the Florida Pas sage, stand the tabby ruins of the octagonal fort built by the Span- iards in 1880. Within its concern
 tric walls troops were stationed to protect the friars of the Mission of San Jose de Zapala. Thomas Spalding built sugar mill on the mission foundations, and within re- cent years the Hong tabby" has been converted into guesthouse,
 a portion of which is now used as a sch0Olroom for the nine white children on the island.
 A short ride farther north brings one to the ruins of Le Chatelet. This old site recalls the colonial efforts of five Frenchmen who bought the island and settled at
 several places in their little haven. The agreement which they made in St. Malo, France, before the be- ginning of their venture, Is one of
 the treasures of the Sapelo library. Soon to disagree, four of them
 moved to Jekyl island. Later Le Chateet passed into the hands of Marquis de Montalet, French
 nobleman who had fled from Santo Domingo, where his whole family
 had been massacred in slave up-
 rising.
 Many of the descendants of Spald-
 ing's slaves still live on tiny farms
 on the island. Of the three settle
 ments-Raccoon Bluff, Hog Ham,
 mock, and Shell Hammock-the
 former Is the largest.
 At Hampton Point and Retreat
 on St. Simon island the first sea-
 island cotton was grown from seeds
 introduced from the island of An- guilla, in the West Indies. This remarkable long fiber cotton creat- ed much comment among cotton
 buyers when the first crop, shipped
 from Hampton Point. reached Liv-