Some Human Habitations 



5 11 



Photo from North Carolina Geological Survey 



fisherman's camp: Shackelford bank, north Carolina 



and upon the keys around Biscayne Bay, 

 and that, so far as he knew, they were 

 found all along the keys and the shore- 

 line as far as Key West. Yet letters to 

 several observant gentlemen, thoroughly 

 acquainted with the coast, failed to get 

 for me any information or photographs 

 of such lodges, all of them assuring me 

 that no such exist on the Florida coast. 

 Yet another trial has brought me the 

 desired photograph, the promise of sev- 

 eral more, and the assurance that I may 

 soon obtain still more, as the land south 

 of Cocoanut Grove is being taken up by 

 homesteaders. 



The lodge in the tree-top, which was 

 unknown except along the North Caro- 

 lina coast, has largely disappeared with 

 the disapperance of the great forests 

 along "The Banks," as these sand-reefs 

 are called. One of the earliest, and the 

 first to disappear, was that at the Kill 

 Devil Hills, which was used by the early 

 settlers of the Albemarle district as a 



watch-tower when on the lookout for 

 New England ships that brought Medford 

 rum to the Carolinians in exchange for 

 corn. Another was at Nag's Head, where 

 the rude wrecker of Colonial days found 

 it to his advantage to keep informed as 

 to the movements of these same New 

 England ships on their way to the West 

 Indies for molasses and more rum. No 

 old inhabitant of Hatteras has any recol- 

 lection, or even tradition, of such a look- 

 out there ; but Blackbeard's piratical crew 

 maintained a tree-top lodge in "the great 

 oaks near Teach's Hole, on the south- 

 west end of Ocracoke Island. These all 

 disappeared long before the days of our 

 oldest inhabitant. 



Southward from Ocracoke Inlet, such 

 lookouts, as they were here called, have 

 been known during the past half-century 

 on Portsmouth Island, on Core Bank, 

 near Cape Lookout, and near the western 

 extremity of Bogue Banks, where they 

 were maintained from early Colonial days 



