OPENING OF HATTERAS INLET. 41 



connected together, and the live oaks washing up by the roots and 

 tumbling into the ocean. I was well acquainted with the growth of 

 the land where the inlet now is, I lived with my brother where the in- 

 let is now. I have worked with him cutting wood and chopping yo- 

 pon, where now, I have no doubt there is three or four fathoms of 

 water; the growth was live oak principally, did not grow tall, but 

 large trunks and spreading limbs. I had an old uncle lived about 

 where the inlet is, who had a flue fig orchard, and many peach trees 

 on his lot, with fine potato patch and garden." 



Again he writes : 



" Since I wrote you last, I have conversed with the two oldest men 

 living on this portion of the Banks (one is in his 75th year, the other 

 in his 72d), both born and raised where the inlet is now. 



John Austin, the eldest, says he remembers his grandfather very 

 well; he says he has heard the old gentleman say, there was an inlet 

 about six miles southwest of where the inlet is now; he states that 

 the old man said there was an English vessel, a ship, ran on the bar 

 of said inlet, and was lost, and the wreck sanded up and the beach 

 made down to it and finally closed up the inlet; Mr. Austin's grand- 

 father's name was Styron; died Mch. 7, 1825, aged 86 yrs. 



The other man I talked with was William Ballance. He says his 

 father died in 182G, GS years old ; he says he heard his father say that 

 he had seen a piece of wreck standing up, right at, or near the place 

 that Austin speaks of as being the place where the inlet was, and 

 bad been told by older people, that it was the stern post of the ves- 

 sel that closed up the inlet. This place that they speak of is about 

 five or six miles from this inlet we have now, between two points 

 known now as ' Shingle Creek' and ' Quake Hammock. ' " 



In a letter from Mr. Quidley dated Sept. 29, 1884, he 

 says : 



"The Shingle Creek is about 5 miles from Hatteras Inlet, is 40 or 

 50 yds. wide, makes up through a portion of marsh and a low growth 

 of woods or bushes to the beach, but not through the beach ; and a 

 little to northeast of it there is another creek, about like the one just 

 named, called the " Old Inlet Creek," which I think might take its 

 name from being somewhere near where the inlet was. The " Great 

 Swash" is a level place of beach, nothing growing on it but some 

 grass or sedge next to the sound side, and extends about a mile to 

 next growth of woods called "Knole": the Quake Hammock is a 

 small clump of woods lying between Shingle Creek and Great Swash. 



I cannot give tlie exact time that vessels left oflf passing through 



EaSEX U^ST. BULLJiTLN, VOL. XVU G 



