From Sloop Landing, On My New Friends'
Plantation, To New Topsail Inlet I Had A Brisk
Row Of Five Miles.
Vessels drawing eight feet of
water can reach this landing from the open sea
upon a full tide.
The sea was rolling in at this
ocean door as my canoe crossed it to the next
marsh thoroughfare, which connected it with
Old Topsail Inlet, where the same monotonous
surroundings of sand-hills and marshes are to be found.
The next tidal opening was Rich Inlet, which
had a strong ebb running through it to the
sea. From it I threaded the thoroughfares up
to the mainland, reaching at dusk the "Emma
Nickson Plantation." The creeks were growing
more shallow, and near the bulkhead, or
middleground, where tides from two inlets met, there
was so little water and so many oyster reefs, that,
without a chart, the route grew more and more
perplexing in character. It was a distance of
thirty miles to Cape Fear, and twenty miles
to New Inlet, which was one of the mouths
of Cape Fear River. From the plantation to
New Inlet, the shallow interior sheets of water
with their marshes were called Middle,
Masonboro, and Myrtle sounds. The canoe could
have traversed these waters to the end of
Myrtle Sound, which is separated from Cape Fear
River by a strip of land only one mile and a
half wide, across which a portage can be made
to the river. Barren and Masonboro are the only
inlets which supply the three little sounds above
mentioned with water, after Rich Inlet is passed.
The coast from Cape Fear southward eighty
miles, to Georgetown, South Carolina, has several
small inlets through the beach, but there are no
interior waters parallel with the coast in all that
distance, which can be of any service to the
canoeist for a coast route. It therefore became
necessary for me to follow the next watercourse
that could be utilized for reaching Winyah Bay,
which is the first entrance to the system of
continuous watercourses south of Cape Fear.
The trees of the Nickson Plantation hid the
house of the proprietor from view; but upon
beaching my canoe, a drove of hogs greeted me
with friendly grunts, as if the hospitality of their
master infected the drove; and, as it grew dark,
they trotted across the field, conducting me up
to the very doors of the planter's home, where
Captain Mosely, late of the Confederate army,
gave me a soldier's hearty welcome.
"The war is over," he said, "and any northern
gentleman is welcome to what we have left."
Until midnight, this keen-eyed, intelligent officer
entertained me with a flow of anecdotes of the
war times, his hair-breadth escapes, &c.; the
conversation being only interrupted when he
paused to pile wood upon the fire, the
chimney-place meantime glowing like a furnace. He
told me that Captain Maffitt, of the late
Confederate navy, lived at Masonboro, on the sound;
and that had I called upon him, he could have
furnished, as an old officer of the Coast Survey,
much valuable geographical information.
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