NORTH CAROLINA 153 



shrubs, Tupalos, tulip-trees, and others, the Tillandsia 

 hanging in long filaments from their wide-spreading 

 branches, and a number of climbing plants woven 

 everywhere on trunk and limbs but at the time, un- 

 fortunately, most of them were leafless and quite with- 

 out blooms. The morning of this passage it was bitter 

 cold, felt all the more because it was necessary to keep 

 very still in the little open boat. The negroes rowing 

 kept warm at their work, but none the less they had 

 brought along a few chips with which they studiously 

 kept up a little fire, of no use to them except for the 

 pleasure of seeing it burn. They love fire above 

 everything and take it with them whatever they are 

 about, in the field, in the woods, on the water, and 

 that too at the hottest time of the year. From the 

 plantation where we were landed, (and where for two 

 Spanish dollars cash we had bad tea, worse sugar, no 

 milk, tough beef, and little bread), we came 10 miles, 

 by a long labyrinthine woods-road, to Town Creek, 

 and thence 37 miles of uniform forest, past Lock- 

 wood's Folly and Shallot Bridge, to Murray's house at 

 the South Carolina line. The whole way from Wil- 

 mington we remarked scarcely 8 or 9 houses. 



This road described, which took us through North 

 Carolina, runs near to the coast and is therefore called 

 the lower road. The country does not certainly ap- 

 pear to the best advantage here, but from the character 

 of this region one must not form an opinion of the 

 whole. Inwards from the sea-shore, for 80-100 miles, 

 the land is uniformly a sand-slope, as in Virginia, 

 South Carolina, and Georgia. The higher and more 

 barren parts of this surface are occupied by the im- 

 mense pine-forests, and called therefore ' dry pine 

 11 



