tookkr] THE TERM "POQUOSIN" 163
The earliest printed examples of this topographical application are given by John Lawson, 1 as follows: "As we row'd up the [Santee] River, we found the Land towards the mouth and for about sixteen miles up it, scarce anything but swamp and/^r- coarson, affording vast Ciprus-trees of which the French make canoes." On the margin of this page (9) occurs " Percoarson, a sort of low land." Lawson further recites : " The swamp I now spoke of, is not a miry bog, as others generally are, but you go down to it thro' a steep Bank, at the Foot of which begins this valley, where you may go dry for perhaps 200 yards then you meet with a small Brook, or Run of water, about 2 or 3 feet deep, then dry Land for such another Space, so another Brook, thus continuing, the Land in this Percoarson Valley, being exceedingly rich." Again he wrote : " The first night we lay in a rich per- koson or low ground, that was hard by a creek, and good dry land." In the i860 edition of Lawson's work, the word is modernized as 4 Pocoson!
A deed of 1714' mentions the following boundaries "to an old gum standing by the side of a Poquoson, dividing this land, and the land now in the possession of John Dawley, thence run- ning down the East side of s d run poquoson and marsh to muddy creek." William Byrd* (1729) frequently mentions the term, but more especially descriptive is the following : " By the Pilotage of these People we row'd up an Arm of the Sound called the Back-Bay, till we came to the Head of it, there we were stopp't by a miry Pocoson, full half mile in Breadth, thro* which we were oblig'd to daggle on foot plungeing, now and then, tho* we pickt our Way, up to the knees in mud." The term was also frequently used by George Washington* (1763), for example, " Black mould taken out of the pocoson on the creek side."
��1 History of Carolina, 1709, pp. 9, 26, 57, 115.
- William and Mary College Quarterly ; vol. IV, 1895, p. 22.
1 History of the Dividing Line, vol. I, 1 866, p. 29.
- Writings, vol. I t 1889, p. 163.
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