South Cove

South Cove was a peaceful backwater on Girdley Island.South Cove Village Known also as Girdley camp, this collection of twenty-odd crofts and huts was as quiet and peaceful as a Riverman village was likely to get.Its male inhabitants fished in the Brandywine and trapped and hunted along the shores adjacent to the island.Although they occasionally visited Rood or Bree to procure manufactured goods, regular visits by canoe-loads of Rivermen from other settlements provided most of their contact with the outside world.Truly violent crimes were rare on Girdley Island; mothers teached their children manners by telling them about the Eath and the Gulper: the first was an Elvish wight who turned runaway boys into ducklings and had them for supper; the latter was a gigantic fish that swallowed thieves and wastrels whole  while they paddled their boats down the river. "The Cut," a narrow entrance through the rocks on the east side, was used as a mark of good boatmanship; the Rivermen were willing to bet good money that no "mainlander" could run it without hitting the rocks on either side."The Post", a tall  limestone pillar marking the entrance on the southwest side, was deceptively far from the village docks.All South Cove boys had to swim out to it, around  it, and back to be accepted as men.They did't mind, given the fatalistic Northlander view of life, challenging mainlanders to race out to the Post.The  trick, when going around the rock, was to keep within an arms-length of it; failure to do this meant the swimmer had been caught by the main river current  and swept away.Only a successful Extremely Hard swimming maneuver allowed the unfortunate soul to get back to the village without aid.