第 16 页

Since boyhood the counsels of this friend had guided me on many a journey of exploration. He had not deserted me even in this experiment, which my friends called "your wildest and most foolish undertaking." He had obtained from the Light House Board a general letter to the lightkeepers of the United States, signed by the naval secretary, Mr. Walker, in which the keepers were authorized to grant me shelter, &c., when necessary. I did not have occasion to use this letter more than twice during my journey. Having secreted my canoe in the coarse grass of the lowland, I trudged, with my letter in hand, over the sands to the house of the light-keeper, Captain Hatzel, who received me cordially; and after recording in his log-book the circumstances and date of my arrival, conducted me into a comfortable room, which was warmed by a cheerful fire, and lighted up by the smiles of his most orderly wife. Everything showed discipline and neatness, both in the house and the light-tower. The whitest of cloths was spread upon the table, and covered with a well-cooked meal; then the father, mother, and two sons, with the stranger within their gates, thanked the Giver of good gifts for his mercies.

Joining the night-watch of the chief lightkeeper, I also joined in the good man's enthusiasm for his wonderful "fixed white light," the bright beams of which poured out upon the surrounding waters a flood if brilliancy, gladdening hearts far out at sea, even though twenty miles away, and plainly saying, "This is Body Island Beach: keep off!" How grand it was to walk out on this gallery in the sky! Looking eastward, a limitless expanse of ocean; gazing westward, the waters of the great sound, the shores of which were low marshes miles away. Below me could be heard the soft cackle of the snow-goose (Anser hyperboreus), which had left its nesting-place on the barren grounds of arctic America, and was now feeding contentedly in its winter home in the shallow salt-ponds; which the gentle shur-r-r- of the waves softly broke on the strand. Above, the star-lit heavens, whose tender beauty seemed almost within my grasp. Perched thus upon a single shaft, on a narrow strip of sand far out in the great water, the many thoughts born of solitude crowded my mind, when my reverie was abruptly broken by an exclamation from Captain Hatzel, who threw open the door, and exclaimed, with beaming eyes peering into the darkness as he spoke, "I see it! Yes, it is! Hatteras Light, thirty-five miles away. This night, December 13th, is the first time I have caught its flash. Tell it to the Hatteras keeper when you visit the cape."

From Captain Hatzel I gleaned some facts of deep interest in regard to the inhabitants of the sound. Some of them, he told me, had Indian blood in their veins; and to prove the truth of his assertion he handed me a well-worn copy of the "History of North Carolina," by Dr. Francis L. Hawks, D. D. From this I obtained facts which might serve for the intricate mazes of a romance. It had been a pet scheme with Sir Walter Raleigh to colonize the coast of North Carolina, then known as Virginia, and though several expeditions had been sent out for that object, each had failed of successful issue. One of these expeditions sent by Sir Walter to Roanoke Island consisted of one hundred and twenty-one persons, of whom seventeen were women and six children. Of all these souls only two men returned to the old country, the fate of the remainder being unknown, and shrouded in the gloom which always attends mystery. England did not, however, leave her children to perish on a barren shore in the new land without at least an effort to succor them.

On March 20, in the year 1590, there sailed from Plymouth three ships, the Hopewell, John Evangelist, and Little John, taking in tow two shallops which were afterwards lost at sea. In these days the largest vessels of a fleet did not exceed one hundred to one hundred and forty tons burden. This expedition was under the charge of Admiral John White, governor of the colony of Sir Walter Raleigh on Roanoke Island, and who had left the feeble band on the island in 1587. In thirty-six days and eight hours these small vessels arrived off "Hatorask" -- Hatteras Beach. The fleet dropped anchor three leagues off the beach, and sent a well-manned boat through an inlet to Pamplico Sound.

There existed in those days passages from the ocean through the beaches into the sounds, which have since been filled up by the action of the sea. Old Roanoke Inlet, now closed, which was about four miles north of the modern Oregon Inlet, is supposed to be the one used by Sir Walter Raleigh's expeditions. It is only four miles from the site of this closed inlet to Shallowbag Bay, on Roanoke Island. At the southern entrance of the bay, near Ballast Point, some vessel evidently grounded and threw overboard her stone ballast; hence the name of the point. Captain Hatzel has examined this stone, and gives his opinion, as an old pilot, that it is foreign in character. He never met with similar stones, and believes that this ballast was deposited at Shallowbag Bay by some of the vessels of Sir Walter's expeditions.

As the boat's crew above mentioned rowed northward to Roanoke Island -- made famous two hundred and seventy-two years later by the National and Confederate struggles -- they sounded their trumpets and sang familiar songs, which they hoped might be borne to their countrymen on the shore; but the marshes and upland wilderness returned no answering voice.

At daybreak the explorers landed upon Roanoke Island, which is twelve miles long by two and a half wide, and found the spot where Admiral White had left the colony in 1587. Eagerly searching for any tokens of the lost ones, they soon traced in the light soil of the island the imprint of the moccasin of the savage, but looked in vain for any footprint of civilized man. What had become of their countrymen?

At last some one spied a conspicuous tree, far up on a sandy bank, blazed and carved. There were but three letters cut upon it, C.R.O., but these simple symbols possessed a world of meaning. Three years before, when the sad farewells were being spoken, and the ships were ready to set sail for England, this feeble band, left to struggle in the wilds of the new land with sad forebodings of their possible fate, had agreed upon a signal, and had promised Admiral White that if driven to starvation upon the island, they would plant their colony fifty miles inland, near a tribe of friendly Indians. Indeed, before the ships sailed for England, they were making preparations for this move. Admiral White requested them to carve upon a tree the name of the locality to which they should remove, and if distress had overtaken them they were to add a cross over the lettering. Anxiously gathering round this interesting relic of the lost Englishmen, the rude chirography was eagerly scanned, but no vestige of a cross was found.

Much relieved in mind, the little company continued their investigations, when, farther on, almost in their very pathway, there rose a noble tree, pointing its top heavenward, as though to remind them in whose care their lost ones had been. Approaching this giant, who had stood a silent sentinel through winter storms and summer skies, they found he bore upon his body a message for them. Stripped of its bark, five feet upward from the ground there appeared upon the bare surface in bold lettering the word so full of hope -- Croatan; and now also, as in the last case, without the graven cross. Cheered by these signs, and believing that the lost colonists had carried out their early intentions, and were now located among the friendly tribe of Croatans, wheresoever their country might be, the boat's company decided to go at once to the ships, and return the next day in search of the lost colony.

One of the ships, in moving its position from the unprotected anchorage-ground, parted its cable and left an anchor on the bottom -- the second that had been lost. The wind drove the ships towards the beach, when a third anchor was lowered; but it held the little fleet so close in to the breakers, that the sailors were forced to slip their cable and work into a channel-way, where, in deeper water, they held their ground.

In debating the propriety of holding on and attempting to wear out the gale, the scarcity of their provisions, and the possession of but one cask of water, and only one anchor for the fleet to ride at, decided them to go southward in quest of some favorable landing, where water could be found. The council held out the hope of capturing Spanish vessels in the vicinity of the West Indies; and it was agreed that, if successful they should return, richly laden with spoil, to seek their exiled countrymen. One of these vessels returned to England, while the Admiral laid his course for Trinidad; and this was the last attempt made to find the colonists.

More than a century after Admiral White had abandoned his colony, Lawson, in writing about the Hatteras Indians, says: "They said that several of their ancestors were white people, and could talk in a book as we do; the truth of which is confirmed by grey eyes being frequently found among them, and no others. They value themselves extremely for their affinity to the English, and are ready to do them all friendly offices. It is probable that the settlement miscarried for want of supplies from England, or through the treachery of the natives; for we may reasonably suppose that the English were forced to cohabit with them for relief and conversation, and that in process of time they conformed themselves to the manners of their Indian relations."

Dr. Hawks thinks, "that, driven by starvation, such as survived the famine were merged into the tribes of friendly Indians at Croatan, and, alas! lost ere long every vestige of Christianity and civilization; and those who came to shed light on the darkness of paganism, in the mysterious providence of God ended by relapsing themselves into the heathenism they came to remove. It is a sad picture of poor human nature."

It needed not the fierce gusts of wind that howled about the tall tower, causing it to vibrate until water would be spilled out of a pail resting upon the floor of the lantern, blowing one day from one quarter of the compass, and changing the next to another, to warn me that I was near the Cape of Storms.

Refusing to continue longer with my new friends, the canoe was put into the water on the 16th, and Captain Hatzel's two sons proceeded in advance with a strong boat to break a channelway through the thin ice which had formed in the quiet coves. We were soon out in the sound, where the boys left me, and I rowed out of the southern end of Roanoke and entered upon the wide area of Pamplico Sound. To avoid shoals, it being calm, I kept about three miles from the beach in three feet of water, until beyond Duck Island, when the trees on Roanoke Island slowly sank below the horizon; then gradually drawing in to the beach, the two clumps of trees of north and south Chicamicomio came into view. A life-saving station had recently been erected north of the first grove, and there is another fourteen miles further south. The two Chicamicomio settlements of scattered houses are each nearly a mile in length, and are separated by a high, bald sand-beach of about the same length, which was once heavily wooded; but the wind has blown the sand into the forest and destroyed it. A wind-mill in each village raised its weird arms to the breeze.

Three miles further down is Kitty Midget's Hammock, where a few red cedars and some remains of live-oaks tell of the extensive forest that once covered the beach. Here Captain Abraham Hooper lives, and occupies himself in fishing with nets in the ocean for blue-fish, which are salted down and sent to the inland towns for a market. I had drawn my boat into the sedge to secure a night's shelter, when the old captain on his rounds captured me. The change from a bed in the damp sedge to the inside seat of the largest fireplace I had ever beheld, was indeed a pleasant one. Its inviting front covered almost one side of the room. While the fire flashed up the wide chimney, I sat inside the fireplace with the three children of my host, and enjoyed the genial glow which arose from the fragments of the wreck of a vessel which had pounded herself to death upon the strand near Kitty Midget's Hammock. How curiously those white-haired children watched the man who had come so far in a paper boat! "Why did not the paper boat soak to pieces?" they asked. Each explanation seemed but to puzzle them the more; and I found myself in much the same condition of mind when trying to make some discoveries concerning Kitty Midget. She must, however, have lived somewhere on Clark's Beach long before the present proprietor was born. We spent the next day fishing with nets in the surf for blue-fish, it being about the last day of their stay in that vicinity. They go south as far as Cape Hatteras, and then disappear in deep water; while the great flocks of gulls, that accompany them to gather the remnants of fish they scatter in their savage meals, rise in the air and fly rapidly away in search of other dainties.

On Thursday I set out for Cape Hatteras. The old sailor's song, that -

"Hatteras has a blow in store For those who pass her howling door,"

has far more truth than poetry in it. Before proceeding far the wind blew a tempest, when a young fisherman in his sailboat bore down upon me, and begged me to come on board. We attempted to tow the canoe astern, but she filled with water, which obliged us to take her on board. As we flew along before the wind, dashing over the shoals with mad-cap temerity, I discovered that my new acquaintance, Burnett, was a most daring as well as reckless sailor. He told me how he had capsized his father's schooner by carrying sail too long. "This 'ere slow way of doing things" he detested. His recital was characteristic of the man.

"You see, sir, we was bound for Newbern up the Neuse River, and as we were well into the sound with all sail set, and travelling along lively, daddy says, 'Lorenzo, I reckon a little yaupon wouldn't hurt me, so I'll go below and start a firs under the kittle.' Do as you likes, daddy,' sez I. So down below he goes, and I takes command of the schooner. A big black squall soon come over Cape Hatteras from the Gulf Stream, and it did look like a screecher. Now, I thought, old woman, I'll make your sides ache; so I pinted her at it, and afore I could luff her up in the wind, the squall kreened her on to her beam-ends. You'd a laughed to have split yourself, mister, if you could have seen daddy a-crawling out of the companion-way while the water was a-running down stairs like a crick. Says he, ruther hurriedly, 'Sonny, what's up?' It isn't what's up, daddy; but what's down,' sez I; it sort o' looks as if we had capsized.' Sure 'nuff,' answered dad, as the ballast shifted and the schooner rolled over keel uppermost. We floundered about like porpoises, but managed to get astride her backbone, when dad looked kind of scornfully at me, and burst out with, 'Sonny, do you call yourself a keerful sailor?' 'Keerful enough, dad,' sez I, 'for a smart one. It's more credit to a man to drive his vessel like a sailor, than to be crawling and bobbing along like a diamond-backed terrapin.' Now, stranger, if you'll believe me, that keerful old father of mine would never let me take the helum again, so I sticks to my aunt at the cape."