Where the Wind Does the Work 



3*3 



Forest covered by Shackleford Sandwave 



southward. These are best developed 

 along the Currituck Banks, from Vir- 

 ginia as far south as the Kill Devil Hills, 

 and numbers of them may be seen to the 

 north and to the south from the top of 

 Currituck Light. These whaleheads are 

 composed of singularly homogeneous 

 blown sands, the horns or cusps of the 

 barchanes pointing to leeward, which is 

 almost due south. 



The prevailing winds from a little west 

 of south have rippled the heterogeneous 

 sands on Hatteras just south of the cape, 

 on Shackleford at its southwest extrem- 

 ity, and on the southwest side of Smith's 

 Island. These wind ripples, started in 

 sands exposed by the removal of a strip 

 of forest next the shore, have grown in 

 size to great sand waves, which are ad- 

 vancing on forests, fields, and homes. As 

 the sand wave has advanced it has taken 

 up several feet of the loose soil over 

 which it has passed, undermining houses, 

 laying bare the roots of trees, and ex- 

 posing the bones of the dead in the ceme- 

 teries. 



Diurnal winds from the sea have piled 



the sands into small wandering dunes 

 and hillocks, and even sometimes into 

 sand waves, which are marching steadily 

 inward and shoaling the waters of the 

 sounds. At Nag's Head a large hotel, 

 constituting a solid obstruction, soon had 

 a sand wave built up a short distance in 

 its rear until the level of its roof was 

 reached, when the wave moved forward 

 and engulfed the hotel. In the immediate 

 neighborhood two cottages suffered a 

 similar fate. Here the land gained on the 

 sound 350 feet in 10 years. 



On the northern end of Hatteras Isl- 

 and a fishing village has been similarly 

 buried, while the sand has entirely crossed 

 the island at several places north of the 

 cape. This movement of the sand was 

 started just after the Civil War by the 

 cutting of trees next the shore for ship 

 timbers, and the section is still known as 

 The Great Woods, though not a stick of 

 timber stands upon it today. Pamlico 

 Sound for two miles from the Hatteras 

 shore is growing steadily shallower from 

 the deposit of blown sand. 



On Smith's Island a pilot's village has 



