taking down fences on the way. The judge seemed outraged, but jurors ‘‘are
exceedingly benevolent in such cases’’ (–). Elliott hoped ultimately to
thwart ‘‘the throng of destructives who seem bent on the extermination of
the game; rather than attempt the difficult, and unpopular, and thankless
office of conservators!’’ Some sweet day in future, beyond his own time, he
hoped, ‘‘there will be reform...thejuries will have no interest in constru-
ing away the law...[and] men may, under the sanction of the law, and
without offence, or imputation of aristocracy, preserve the game from exter-
mination—and perpetuate, in so doing, the healthful, generous, and noble
diversion of hunting’’ ().
This last extended quotation fascinates for two reasons: First is the pre-
cocious (if self-interested) declaration for conservation—perhaps more be-
cause the word ‘‘preserve’’ appears, too, suggesting more than wise use of
nature but something approaching the love expressed by Elliott’s contem-
poraries George Catlin and Henry David Thoreau. Second, however, is the
internal contradiction of his denial of ‘‘aristocracy’’ before the declaration
that hunting is ‘‘generous.’’Generous? In a conservationist future, under
rule of law, would not theprivilegeof generosity be gone, too, along with
poaching, night hunting, market hunting, and the knocking down of pri-
vate fences? The rest ofCarolina Sportssuggests otherwise: namely, that
gentlemen hunters and fishers, not themselves needing more to eat, en-
gaged in sports for amusement, to be sure, but principally for the exercise
of power—over slaves, certainly, but also over lesser classes of free people
and all women.
tWealth (and power) that yielded leisure in endless coastal South Caro-
lina summers also offered opportunity for high adventure. William Elliott
came from a vigorous, adventure-seeking tribe that eagerly took opportu-
nities that were exceeded, he once suggested, only by pith-helmeted Euro-
pean tiger hunters in tropical India. One hot day on Port Royal Sound, in the
halcyon days of his grandfather, Elliott wrote, two enormous manta rays ap-
proached the water fence beyond the beach before the old family mansion.
First merely disporting, then apparently frustrated by the fence moorings,
the ‘‘devil-fish’’ (as these generations named them) began to batter and pull
at the fence. Ah, provocation—and justification for adventure! The fabled
grandfather ordered his ‘‘barge’’ and enslaved crew of men, with ‘‘May,’’ ‘‘his
favorite African slave,’’ in the bow with a harpoon. They quickly approached
the first of the pair of mantas, and May, ‘‘grasping his staff in both hands
... sprang into the air, and descended directly on the back of the largest