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.Alife-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.
