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.
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