Then, as I explained the many uses to which paper was put, even to the paying off of great national debts, my audience became very friendly, and offered to get me up a Christmas dinner in their cabins among the groves of trees near the strand, if I would tarry with them until night.
But time was precious; so, with thanks on my part for their kind offers, we parted, they helping me launch my little boat, and waving a cheerful adieu as I headed the canoe for Beaufort, which was quietly passed in the middle of the afternoon.
Three miles further on, the railroad pier of Morehead City, in Bogue Sound, was reached, and a crowd of people carried the canoe into the hotel.A telegram was soon received from the superintendent of the railroad at Newbern, inviting me to a free ride to the city in the first train of the following morning.
The reader who has followed me since I left the chilly regions of the St.Lawrence must not have his patience taxed by too much detail, lest he should weary of my story and desert my company.Were it not for this fear, it would give me pleasure to tell how a week was passed in Newbern; how the people came even from interior towns to see the paper canoe; how some, doubting my veracity, slyly stuck the blades of their pocket-knives through the thin sides of the canoe, forgetting that it had yet to traverse many dangerous inlets, and that its owner preferred a tight, dry boat to one punctured by knives.Even old men became enthusiastic, and when I was absent from my little craft, an uncontrollable ambition seized them, and they got into the frail shell as it rested upon the floor of a hall, and threatened its destruction.It seemed impossible to make one gentleman of Newbern understand that when the boat was in the water she was resting upon all her bearings, but when out of water only upon a thin strip of wood.
"By George," said this stout gentleman in a whisper to a friend, "I told my wife I would get into that boat if I smashed it.""And what did the lady say, old fellow?"
asked the friend.
"O," he replied, '"she said, 'Now don't make a fool of yourself, Fatness, or your ambition may get you into the papers,'" and the speaker fairly shook with laughter.
While at Newbern, Judge West and his brother organized a grand hunt, and the railroad company sent us down the road eighteen miles to a wild district, where deer, coons, and wild-fowl were plentiful, and where we hunted all night for coons and ducks, and all day for deer.Under these genial influences the practical study of geography for the first time seemed dull, and Ibecame aware that, under the efforts of the citizens of Newbern to remind me of the charms of civilized society, I was, as a travelling geographer, fast becoming demoralized.
Could I, after the many pleasures I was daily enjoying, settle down to a steady pull and one meal a day with a lunch of dry crackers; or sleep on the floor of fishermen's cabins, with fleas and other little annoyances attendant thereon? Having realized my position, I tore myself away from my many new friends and retraced my steps to Morehead City, leaving it on Tuesday, January 5th, and rowing down the little sound called Bogue towards Cape Fear.
As night came on I discovered on the shore a grass cabin, which was on the plantation of Dr.
Emmett, and had been left tenantless by some fisherman.This served for shelter during the night though the struggles and squealings of a drove of hogs attempting to enter through the rickety door did not contribute much to my repose.
The watercourses now became more intricate, growing narrower as I rowed southward.
The open waters of the sound were left behind, and I entered a labyrinth of creeks and small sheets of water, which form a network in the marshes between the sandy beach-islands and the mainland all the way to Cape Fear River.
The Core Sound sheet of the United States Coast Survey ended at Cape Lookout, there being no charts of the route to Masonboro.I was therefore now travelling upon local knowledge, which proves usually a very uncertain guide.
In a cold rain the canoe reached the little village of Swansboro, where the chief personage of the place of two hundred inhabitants, Mr.
McLain, removed me from my temporary camping-place in an old house near the turpentine distilleries into his own comfortable quarters.
There are twenty mullet fisheries within ten miles of Swansboro, which employ from fifteen to eighteen men each.The pickled and dried roe of this fish is shipped to Wilmington and to Cincinnati.Wild-fowls abound, and the shooting is excellent.The fishermen say flocks of ducks seven miles in length have been seen on the waters of Bogue Sound.Canvas-backs are called "raft-ducks" here, and they sell from twelve to twenty cents each.Wild geese bring forty cents, and brant thirty.
The marsh-ponies feed upon the beaches, in a half wild state, with the deer and cattle, cross the marshes and swim the streams from the mainland to the beaches in the spring, and graze there until winter, when they collect in little herds, and instinctively return to the piny woods of the uplands.Messrs.Weeks and Taylor had shot, while on a four-days' hunt up the White Oak River, twenty deer.Captain H.D.Heady, of Swansboro, informed me that the ducks and geese he killed in one winter supplied him with one hundred pounds of selected feathers.
Captain Heady's description of Bogue Inlet was not encouraging for the future prosperity of this coast, and the same may be said of all the inlets between it and Cape Fear.
Rainy weather kept me within doors until Friday, the 7th of January, when I rowed down White Oak River to Bogue Inlet, and turned into the beach thoroughfare, which led me three miles and a half to Bear Inlet.My course now lay through creeks among the marshes to the Stand-Back, near the mainland, where the tides between the two inlets head.Across this shoal spot I traversed tortuous watercourses with mud flats, from which beds of sharp raccoon oysters projected and scraped the keel of my boat.
