E 



River of Water, 



by T. Edward Nickens 



ON ANY OTHER DAY this half 

 buried log would go unnoticed. 



For several hours Jim Bahen and I 

 have been threading a small johnboat 

 down a Vernal chasm, the forest-lined 

 lower Cape Fear River, searching for signs 

 of the river's rich heritage as a centuries- 

 old waterway for exploration, commerce 

 and warfare. Bahen, a North Carolina Sea 

 Grant fisheries agent, knows the Cape Fear 

 coastal region with a waterman's zeal, but 

 has rarely ventured above Wilmington; I 

 am simply bewitched with the history of 

 the river's final run to the sea. 



At each sinuous river bend we scan 

 high bluff and swampy lowland alike, 

 hoping to spy the rotting remains of an old 

 wharf, perhaps, or the vestige of an ancient 

 steamboat landing long since swallowed 

 by bramble and shrub. We beach the skiff 

 on one particular sandbar to investigate a 

 vertical post that looks positively piling- 

 like, but after a few minutes of study we 

 chalk it up to the work of a beaver. 

 Another false lead in a morning of false 

 leads. Bahen is already back in the boat 

 when the half-buried chunk of wood 

 catches my eye, under a tangle of willows 

 near the base of the river bluff. 



I bend down for a closer look. The log 

 is only 3 feet long, but shaped just so, with 

 a blunt, spherical end that looks vaguely 

 familiar. I turn it over, the wood spongy in 

 my fingers. There's a surprise, I think: The 

 log is hollow, split lengthwise, with 

 wooden walls 2 inches thick. I wonder 

 what sort of natural process could have 



Phow by Scott D.Taylor 



River of Time 



formed such symmetry when I suddenly 

 suck in my breath. The log has been 

 worked by human hands. 



A dugout canoe, or part of it The bow 

 or stem of some ancient vessel. 



I rub my hand through the hollowed 

 cavity — what a find! — and imagination 

 takes flight. A dugout canoe discovered 

 beneath Lake Phelps has been radiocarbon- 

 dated to be 4,400 years old. Could this be 

 as old? Or could it date to the earliest days 

 of European exploration, when French, 

 Spanish and English commanders skittered 

 up the Cape Fear, agog at garden-like 

 forests and brilliantly hued parakeets? At 

 the earliest, I figure, it must date from the 

 18th or 19th centuries, when Native 

 Americans and colonists alike paddled 

 dugout canoes so large they were fitted 

 with masts and oars, and could hold 50 

 barrels of plantation wares. 



It's been a few hours since we 

 launched our skiff for a day of poking and 

 plodding down the lower Cape Fear, from 

 downstream of Elizabethtown to the 

 Wilmington waterfront. Our plan is simple 

 enough: Armed with daylight and a full 

 tank of gas, we'll let whim serve as a 

 rudder, steering us from riverbank to 

 riverbank. We'll nose up tributaries and 

 around islands, musing about the untold 

 numbers of river travelers — in fishing 

 skiffs, steamboats and wooden barges — 

 who have plied these waters in the past 



Few waters speak of such history as 

 the lower Cape Fear. She is the taproot of 

 Continued 



COASTWATCH 7 



