46 CBLANGES IN THE COAST LINE. 



" The same inlets now exist between the outlying islands, and the 

 same shoals are now found off the coast, as were found by the navi- 

 gators of 1584. The beach, banks, barrier reefs, or whatever they 

 may be called, appear to have been much wider than at the present 

 time. This seems to have been notably the case near Cape Hatteras. 

 The preservation of the status of the bars at the inlets for so many 

 years indicates a permanence in the relation of the forces by which 

 they are maintained." 



Of the inlets on the coast of North Carolina from near 

 Cape Henry to Ocracoke Inlet, that were open in 1585- 

 90, not one, except Ocracoke, is open to-day, and Ocra- 

 coke is of little use to navigation : there was no inlet be- 

 tween tliose near, and north of Roanoke Island, and one 

 which appears on the maps as being at Cape Hatteras. 

 The date of closing of the inlet at Cape Hatteras it is im- 

 possible to give, but that there was one admits of no dis- 

 pute ; the old maps give it, and in the report of the last 

 voyage made by John White in 1590, appears this : 



" On the twelfth, in the morning we departed from thence, and 

 toward night we came to an anchor at the northeast end of the island 

 of Croatoan, by reason of a breach which we perceived to lie out two 

 or three leagues into the sea; here we rode all that night." "This 

 breach is in thirty -five degrees and a half, and lays at the very north- 

 east point of Croatoan, where goes a fret out of the main sea into 

 the inner waters which part the islands and the main land." 



As was the course in those days, White had made the 

 West Indies first, then the coast of Florida, and was coast- 

 ing along towards Roanoke Island, and the day before the 

 event chronicled above had anchored off Cape Lookout, or 

 near Beaufort. Croatoan was that part of the coast lying 

 northeast and southwest, between old Hatteras Inlet and 

 the inlet at Cape Hatteras. 



The latitude given in the extract above would place the 

 breach and fret rather north of the present Cape Hatteras, 

 but an error of 15' to 25' in those days, would not be too 

 much to suppose. 



