CHAP. XVI.] WILMINGTON. 219 



be superseded, or nearly so, by a more inland road now making 

 through Haleigh. We reached Wilmington without much de 

 lay, in spite of the ice on the rails, and the running of our loco 

 motive engine against a cow. On approaching that town, we 

 were glad to see that the ground was not covered with snow as 

 every where to the northward, and our eyes were refreshed by 

 the sigl^pf verdure, caused by the pines, and by two kinds of 

 evergreef oaks, besides magnolias, and an undergrowth of holly 

 and kalmia. In the streets and suburbs of Wilmington, the 

 Pride-of-India tree (Melia azedarach) is very conspicuous, some 

 of them twenty-five years old, having survived many a severe 

 frost, especially that of the autumn of the present year, the se 

 verest since 1835. There are also some splendid live oaks here 

 (Quercus virens), a tree of very slow growth, which furnishes 

 the finest timber for ship-building. 



We reached Wilmington after the steamboat for Charleston 

 had departed, and I was not sorry to have a day to collect ter 

 tiary fossils in the cliffs near the town. The streets which had 

 just been laid in ashes when we were here four years ago, are 

 now rebuilt ; but there has been another fire this year, imputed 

 very generally to incendiaries, because it broke out in many 

 places at once. There had been a deficiency of firemen, owing 

 to the state having discontinued the immunity from militia duty, 

 formerly conceded to those who served the fire-engines. The 

 city, however, has now undertaken to find substitutes for young 

 men who will join the fire companies. A lady told me that, 

 when the conflagration burst forth very suddenly, she was with 

 a merchant whose house was not insured, and, finding him panic- 

 struck, and incapable of acting for himself, she had selected his 

 ledgers and other valuables, and was carrying them away to her 

 own house ; but on the way the civic guard stopped her in the 

 dark, and, suspecting her to be a person of color, required her to 

 show her pass. She mentioned this incidentally, as a serious 

 cause of delay when time was precious ; but it brought home 

 forcibly to our minds the extraordinary precautions which one 

 half the population here think it necessary to take against the 

 other half. 



