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The National Geographic Magazine 



Photo by Collier Cobb 



fisherman's kitchen : Shackelford island, north Carolina 



sea this occasional has become the usual, 

 and temporary habitations have become 

 permanent, being kept in repair and used 

 from season to season when hunting or 

 fishing. 



Our modern savage-from-choice has 

 also the strong instinct for concealment, 

 that characterized his savage forebears, 

 as is shown by the fact that many men 

 who dwell near the coast know nothing of 

 these lodges. For example, I have visited 

 hemispherical huts of woven rushes on 

 Cedar Island, Core Bank, Shackleford 

 Bank, near Tar Landing, less than a mile 

 from Fort Macon, at the Rice Path, about 

 the middle of Bogue Banks, and at the 

 Carrott Island fishery, about four miles 

 from Beaufort. On Cedar Island there 

 is a large kraal with domed and conical 

 huts of woven rush and with gabled 

 thatches. Yet well-informed citizens of 

 Beaufort and Morehead City know little 

 or nothing of them. 



In 1902 I took a boat-load of forty- 

 two friends from Morehead City to the 

 Shackleford lodge, not one of whom had 

 ever seen or heard of such dwellings on 



the North American continent, though 

 most of them had been regular attendants 

 upon the sessions of the North Carolina 

 Teachers' Assembly, at Morehead City, 

 for a number of years. I cannot remem- 

 ber when this hut was built, but it has 

 been in constant use for more than a 

 score of years. It is not distinctly hemi- 

 spherical, but is round at the bottom, with 

 vertical walls, and its roof is rather coni- 

 cal than hemispherical. It is twelve feet 

 in diameter and six feet in height. It 

 has a door large enough to crawl through 

 and a fireplace in the center, the smoke 

 escaping by a hole in the apex of the 

 roof. The rushes have been so thoroughly 

 soaked in salt water as to be practically 

 fire-proof. 



Another case in point : A number of 

 years ago I was wrecked on the Florida 

 coast, and came upon a little key which 

 had upon it one of these primitive habita- 

 tions of palmetto thatch. I lost my 

 camera in the wreck and consequently 

 could not photograph it ; but my kind host 

 assured me that there were many such 

 hid awav in the thickets of the mainland 



