By
This Timely Notice A Wrecking-Steamer Had
Arrived And Hauled The Schooner Off In Good
Condition.
A low range of hills commences at Cape
Hatteras, in the rear of the light-house, and extends
nearly to Hatteras Inlet.
This range is heavily
wooded with live-oaks, yellow pines, yaupons,
cedars, and bayonet-plants. The fishermen and
wreckers live in rudely constructed houses,
sheltered by this thicket, which is dense enough to
protect them from the strong winds that blow
from the ocean and the sound.
I walked twelve miles through this pretty,
green retreat, and spent Sunday with Mr. Homer
W. Styron, who keeps a small store about two
miles from the inlet. He is a self-taught
astronomer, and used an ingeniously constructed
telescope of his own manufacture for studying
the heavens.
I found at the post-office in his store a letter
from a yachting party which had left Newbern,
North Carolina, to capture the paper canoe and
to force upon its captain the hospitality of the
people of that city, on the Neuse River, one
hundred miles from the cape. Judge I.E. West,
the owner of the yacht "Julia," and his friends,
had been cruising since the eleventh day of the
month from Ocracoke Inlet to Roanoke Island
in search of me. Judge West, in his letter,
expressed a strong desire to have me take my
Christmas dinner with his family. This
generous treatment from a stranger was fully
appreciated, and I determined to push on to
Morehead City, from which place it would be
convenient to reach Newbern by rail without
changing my established route southward, as I
would be compelled to do if the regular water
route of the Neuse River from Pamlico Sound
were followed.
On this Saturday night, spent at Hatteras Inlet,
there broke upon us one of the fiercest tempests
I ever witnessed, even in the tropics. My
pedestrian tramp down the shore had scarcely ended
when it commenced in reality. For miles along
the beach thousands of acres of land were soon
submerged by the sea and by the torrents of
water which fell from the clouds. While for a
moment the night was dark as Erebus, again
the vivid flash of lightning exposed to view the
swaying forests and the gloomy sound. The sea
pounded on the beach as if asking for admission
to old Pamplico. It seemed to say, I demand a
new inlet; and, as though trying to carry out its
desire, sent great waves rolling up the shingle
and over into the hollows among the hills,
washing down the low sand dunes as if they also
were in collusion with it to remove this frail
barrier, this narrow strip of low land which
separated the Atlantic from the wide interior
sheet of water.
The phosphorescent sea, covered with its tens
of millions of animalcula, each one a miniature
light-house, changed in color from inky blackness
to silver sheen. Will the ocean take to itself
this frail foothold?
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