Voyage of The Paper Canoe [66]
the place of sepulture for the inhabitants of other generations, but for years past the tidal current had been cutting the shore away until coffin after coffin with its contents had been washed into the sound. Captain Isaac S. Jennings, of Ocean County, New Jersey, had described this spot to me as follows:
"I landed at Portsmouth and examined this curious burial-ground. Here by the water were the remains of the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the people of the village so near at hand; yet these dismal relics of their ancestors were allowed to be stolen away piecemeal by the encroaching ocean. While I gazed sadly upon the strata of coffins protruding from the banks, shining objects like jewels seemed to be sparkling from between the cracks of their fractured sides; and as I tore away the rotten wood, rows of toads were discovered sitting in solemn council, their bright eyes peering from among the debris of bones and decomposed substances."
Portsmouth Island is nearly eight miles long. Whalebone Inlet is at its lower end, but is too shallow to be of any service to commerce. Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets admit sea-going vessels. It is thirty-eight miles from Whalebone Inlet to Cape Lookout, which projects like a wedge into the sea nearly three miles from the mainland, and there is not another passage through the narrow beach in all that distance that is of any use to the mariner. Following the trend of the coast for eleven miles from the point of Cape Lookout, there is an inlet, but, from the character of its channel and its shallowness, it is not of much value.
Leaving Portsmouth, the canoe entered Core Sound, which grew narrower as the shoals inside of Whalebone Inlet were crossed, partly by rowing and partly by wading on the sand-flats. As night came on, a barren stretch of beach on my left hand was followed until I espied the only house within a distance of sixteen miles along the sea. It was occupied by a coasting skipper, whose fine little schooner was anchored a long distance from the land on account of the shoalness of the water. Dreary sand-hills protected the cottage from the bleak winds of the ocean.
While yet a long distance from the skipper's home, a black object could be seen crawling up the sides of a mound of white sand, and after it reached the apex it remained in one position, while I rowed, and waded, and pulled my canoe towards the shore. When the goal was reached, and the boat was landed high up among the scrub growth, I shouldered my blankets and charts, and plodded through the soft soil towards the dark object, which I now recognized to be a man on a lookout post. He did not move from his position until I reached the hillock, when he suddenly slid down the bank and landed at my feet, with a cheery --
"Well, now, I thought it was you. Sez I to myself, That's him, sure, when I seed you four miles away. Fust thinks I, It's only a log, or a piece of wrak-stuff afloating. Pretty soon up comes your head and shoulders into sight; then sez I, It's a man, sure, but where is his boat? for you see, I couldn't see your boat, it was so low down in the water. Then I reckoned it was a man afloating on a log, but arter a while the boat loomed up too, and I says, I'll be dog-goned if that isn't him. I went up to Newbern, some time ago, in the schooner, and the people there said there was a man coming down the coast a-rowing a paper boat on a bet. The boat weighed only fifty-eight pounds, and the man had a heft of only eighty pounds. When pa and me went up to the city agin, the folks said the man was close on to us, and this time they said the man and his boat together weighed only eighty pounds. Now I should think you weighed more than that yourself, letting alone the boat."
Having assured the young man that I was indeed myself, and that the Newbern people had played upon his credulity, we walked on to the house, where the family of Captain James Mason kindly welcomed me to a glowing wood-fire and hearty supper. Though I had never heard of their existence till I entered
"I landed at Portsmouth and examined this curious burial-ground. Here by the water were the remains of the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the people of the village so near at hand; yet these dismal relics of their ancestors were allowed to be stolen away piecemeal by the encroaching ocean. While I gazed sadly upon the strata of coffins protruding from the banks, shining objects like jewels seemed to be sparkling from between the cracks of their fractured sides; and as I tore away the rotten wood, rows of toads were discovered sitting in solemn council, their bright eyes peering from among the debris of bones and decomposed substances."
Portsmouth Island is nearly eight miles long. Whalebone Inlet is at its lower end, but is too shallow to be of any service to commerce. Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets admit sea-going vessels. It is thirty-eight miles from Whalebone Inlet to Cape Lookout, which projects like a wedge into the sea nearly three miles from the mainland, and there is not another passage through the narrow beach in all that distance that is of any use to the mariner. Following the trend of the coast for eleven miles from the point of Cape Lookout, there is an inlet, but, from the character of its channel and its shallowness, it is not of much value.
Leaving Portsmouth, the canoe entered Core Sound, which grew narrower as the shoals inside of Whalebone Inlet were crossed, partly by rowing and partly by wading on the sand-flats. As night came on, a barren stretch of beach on my left hand was followed until I espied the only house within a distance of sixteen miles along the sea. It was occupied by a coasting skipper, whose fine little schooner was anchored a long distance from the land on account of the shoalness of the water. Dreary sand-hills protected the cottage from the bleak winds of the ocean.
While yet a long distance from the skipper's home, a black object could be seen crawling up the sides of a mound of white sand, and after it reached the apex it remained in one position, while I rowed, and waded, and pulled my canoe towards the shore. When the goal was reached, and the boat was landed high up among the scrub growth, I shouldered my blankets and charts, and plodded through the soft soil towards the dark object, which I now recognized to be a man on a lookout post. He did not move from his position until I reached the hillock, when he suddenly slid down the bank and landed at my feet, with a cheery --
"Well, now, I thought it was you. Sez I to myself, That's him, sure, when I seed you four miles away. Fust thinks I, It's only a log, or a piece of wrak-stuff afloating. Pretty soon up comes your head and shoulders into sight; then sez I, It's a man, sure, but where is his boat? for you see, I couldn't see your boat, it was so low down in the water. Then I reckoned it was a man afloating on a log, but arter a while the boat loomed up too, and I says, I'll be dog-goned if that isn't him. I went up to Newbern, some time ago, in the schooner, and the people there said there was a man coming down the coast a-rowing a paper boat on a bet. The boat weighed only fifty-eight pounds, and the man had a heft of only eighty pounds. When pa and me went up to the city agin, the folks said the man was close on to us, and this time they said the man and his boat together weighed only eighty pounds. Now I should think you weighed more than that yourself, letting alone the boat."
Having assured the young man that I was indeed myself, and that the Newbern people had played upon his credulity, we walked on to the house, where the family of Captain James Mason kindly welcomed me to a glowing wood-fire and hearty supper. Though I had never heard of their existence till I entered