Feb. 16, 1888. J 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



3 



t-5* 



u 



EH 



EH 



of course black. The present incumbent is, I am informed, a very 

 able and learned man, and has the good Will of both elements. 



While the morality of this mode of retaining the political con- 

 trol is open to discussion, any one who sees the darky in his own 

 haunts will sympathize entirely with the white side of the sub- 

 ject. Laziness, shiftlessness, dirt and ignorance are his chief 

 characteristics. Wretchedly obsequient and with no manliness 

 about him, he is a creature to be kept at a distance, although this 

 is the fault mainly of his past condition and of the lack of oppor- 

 tunities to better it, as the few bright examples among them 

 show. 



They are the dupes of the smart men of both classes. I heard 

 of one darky preacher who is quite well thought of and is a well 

 educated man in many ways, who started a church to which he 

 holds title in his own name, who requires each attendant at the 

 church to pay him ten cents per week; in case of failure they are 

 read out of church in short order. He has a large congregation 

 and is well fixed financially. 



The darky will work only when he has to. After cotton pick- 

 ing when he comes to town with a little money, the walls of the 

 town will be placarded with bills of darky excursions by steamer 

 and rail, and while his money lasts he crowds the steamers till 

 the decks are awash and the cars until the sides are ready to 

 burst, brass bands of course in plenty. When his money is gone 

 you can hire him for the balance of the year for two dollars a 

 week and board hftnself. His board is composed of cornmeal and 

 yams to eat, and a hut in Hay ti to sleep in: his raiment is the cast 

 off garments of the wites. 



H ay ti is the town across the Trent River. When in 8862 the 

 I nion forces captured Newberne, they made it a rendezvous for 

 the fugitive slaves attracted by their armies, these came in such 

 numbers that the point of land was seized by some process of law 

 or no law, and they were allowed to erect huts upon it. There 

 they and their many descendants are to-day; no white man is in 

 the town; they have city officials of every degree, and an office 

 for every man, but, so I believe, there are no salaries attached, 

 the glory seems to be all that is necessary. This settlement is 

 worth a trip of a hundred miles to see. 



As we sailed up the river it required a watchful eye to keep 

 clear of the stakes, which were driven as thick as poles m a Mass- 

 achusetts bean patch. Along the water front of botli Newberne 

 and Hayti, on the Trent River side, was to be seen their comple- 

 ment, miles upon miles of gill-nets. We were informed that in 

 the fish season just commencing the river would be full of nets of 

 all kinds from the mouth to thirty miles above the town, and that 

 a train load of fresh fish would leave the town daily for the North. 

 The first shad of the season were already in the market. The 

 largest number of these nets are owned by a few men who own 

 hundreds each, and who let them out to the darkies on shares, 

 the fish are brought to market in small schooners of from 30 to 

 50ft. in length, wfiose crews also work on shares. 



These schooners are worth a passing mention, they are of every 

 type of build and rig, some few are smart-looking and are kept in 

 good condition, when this is the case it is usuallv the owner who 

 sails her, and he will be found to be a bright and thrifty example 

 of his race. The rule, however, is an ugly hull of uncertain age, 

 spars gaping from the heat of many summers, rigging hardly 

 worth mentioning, and sails— but here my pen is unequal to the 

 task— imagine, if you can, a suit of sails twenty years in service, 

 with holes of all sizes, too many to count, and patched with cloth 

 of every age and texture, and all black as a collier's mizen,but 

 you can't imagine anything to equal it— a photograph could give 

 no conception of them. These are the craft owned by whites and 

 let to darkies to run on shares. They sneak along from cove to 

 cove and put into harbor if anything stronger than a three-knot 

 breeze blows; unless corn meal and yams were cheap indeed, no 

 such craft would be possible. 



The steam river craft are just a shade better; thev are stern 

 wheelers and flat-bottomed, drawing from 12 to 18in. loaded, their 

 motive power is an ordinary horizontal engine with the fly wheel 

 replaced by a sprocket wheel, which connects with a similar 

 wheel on the stern wheel shaft with a detachable link chain. Two 

 of the steamers are more pretentious and sport two engines and re- 

 semble somewhat a Lilliputian Ohio River stern wheeler. An- 

 other endeavors to work along with a miniature propeller wheel. 

 One day when a strong N.E. wind was blowing into the dock we 

 saw her work two hours trying to back out, which she finally ac- 

 complished only by the aid of poles and warp lines. 



The revenue cutter on duty in the sounds is the Stevens, named 

 after her builder, of Hoboken, N, J. When she was first built 

 she was a monitor and was called Naugatuck. Stevens presented 

 her to the government; she had many features new to the naval 

 world at that time, among others a disappearing gun in the 

 bow, the forerunner of the most modern type of armament. At 

 the close of the war, having had very hard usage and no longer 

 being useful for her original purpose, she was housed over and 

 converted into a revenue cutter. She is very slow, her speed 

 being but little over 7 knots and is so tender that she has to re- 

 main in harbor in heavy weather. Her commanding officer is 

 Capt. Hand, a man who must from his nature have friends all 

 over his station, we also met Lieut. Jarvis and Chief Engineer 

 Tierney, who aided in making our visit pleasant and who after- 

 ward visited the yacht. 



Saturday morning while the three-masted schooner Edna A. 

 Pogue was making sail she gathered stem way and took bottom 

 on the flats, but got off after some trouble, but went on again 

 hard on Quarantine Point, 3 miles down the river. The cutter got 

 under way and went down and pulled her off. And again The . 

 last view we had of the cutter the following Thursday morning 

 was off Pimlico Point, when she was making her was* toward a 

 bound steamer which was hard aground off the point. 'This work 

 is the most important of all the cutter's duties and if they did 

 nothing else they would well repay the shipping industry for the 

 meager appropriations granted them. 



Our stay in Newberne was rendered unpleasant bv the north- 

 easter blowing all the time we were there, accompanied by inter- 

 mittent squalls of rain so that we could see but little of the sur- 

 soundmg country. We made sail Monday, Jan. 16, at 2-30 P M 

 wind N.E., stormy, thermometer 42 and falling. This would give 

 us a head wind after passing Wilkinson's Point, but gave Mlf 

 sheet for the 13-mile run down to Beard's Creek, in which we 

 made harbor at 4:30; the channel into the creek is but 50yds wide 

 and has 8ft. of water, has a shoal with 3ft. of water on either side 

 As it is not buoyed, but has stakes sticking up all over without 

 any apparent method, we had some difficulty getting in the wind 

 being ahead, so we dropped our board to make our draft Oft and 

 used it as a "Dutch lead line," going about whenever it touched 

 bottom. O! my brethren, a cutter is a wonderful craft- a fast 

 sloop is a joy; an able cruiser is a multum in parvo, etc etc 

 But give me the boat which will work to windward and <*o about 

 without her centerboard, and will work herself off a shoal with 

 her sails. In all the numerous times I have had the Monarch on 

 the bottom, she has never failed to come off with no more trouble 

 than running her kedge, and the aid of her sails, and that with- 

 out serious loss of time, 



We lay in Beard's Creek for a change of wind, which did not 

 come until Thursday morning, so after getting permission from 

 the owner of the laud, we spent our time in thinning out a flock 

 of bluebills and dippers which had disturbed our peace of mind 

 by insolently circling around the yacht just out of sunshot, We 

 set our stools off a point midway between their feeding grounds 

 concealing one boat on the point; then taking the light gig we 

 started them up first one way and then the other, they passing- 

 the stools each way. They did not learn sufficient to get into the 

 open until we had half of each bunch. Meanwhile a few hundred 

 henbills were paddling up and down, and had to be scared o \v& v 

 to keep them from pecking the paint off the stools; queer clucks, 

 with as much sense as mules. During our stav several of the 

 small schooners before described came in for harbor, although 

 the wind was fair for them, We had many amusing interviews 

 with them, One dusky individual, who had his wife along and 

 was running cordwqod qn the usuaf share plan, gravel v asked me 

 if I knew General Grant and if he was going to be President 

 again, 



Thursday, Jan, 19 at 9|S0 A, M. made sail, wind N. fresh, ther- 

 mometer SS^, There was ice in a bucket left on deck over night, 

 the first we had seen since we started. Passed Wilkinson's Point 

 at lu:15, found the pile beacon down and nothing to mark the dan- 

 gerous shoal making off from the point. We were informed it had 

 been run down by a schooner some months before; it has been un- 

 marked ever since. Shortly after we passed a large sawmill that 

 bore some resemblance to a small toyvn, so many were the build- 

 ings connected with it, It is at the mouth of Smith and Kershaw's 

 creeks, splendid harbors for any craft which use these waters. 

 The river here is three miles wide and has from 4 to 6 fathoms of 

 water, At the mouth the river widens to over five miles and has 

 good water all the way across. There is a clean sweep from Hat- 

 teras Inlet to Wilkinson's Point, about sixty miles, broken only 

 by Bluff and Brant Island shoals, so that when the wind is norths 

 east a dangerous swell runs up the river. One captain told me he 

 had seen the swell 15ft. high off Wilkinson's Point. There are. 

 however, plenty of harbors on both sides, and after rounding Wil- 

 kinson's Point, the water is landlocked. It also begins to shoal 

 until there is only 9ft. in the channel close to Newberne. I have 

 seen but few more pleasant rivers to navigate than the Neuse, 

 Straight, wide and deep are its characteristics, and always free 

 from ice. 



