With funding from the state's Fishery 

 Resource Grant program, which is 

 administered by North Carolina Sea Grant, 

 Hall has recently finished a three-year study 

 to fine-tune locking methods for the benefit 

 of fish. Mary Moser, a fish biologist from 

 the University of North Carolina at 

 Wilmington, collaborated on the project. 



First, shad were tagged with radio 

 transmitters, and their movements tracked 

 as they moved upstream. Once they entered 

 the lock chamber, two radio receiving 

 stations monitored their movements. By 

 changing how the gate doors are arranged to 

 create a gigantic eddy inside the lock, more 

 fish are encouraged to stay in the chamber, 

 and get the lift up and over the dam. 



Shad, Bahen figures, as we back our 

 boat into the water, "are the poor man's 

 salmon. And there are still people who live 

 for the arrival of these fish. When the 

 dogwood blooms and the com gets to be 

 about 2 inches long, they know it's shad 

 time." The instinctive push against flowing 

 water pulls the fish upstream, out of the 

 ocean and into the breeding grounds up 

 the Cape Fear. 



OUR DESTINY, HOWEVER, UES 

 DOWNSTREAM. From King's Bluff 

 we nose through bottomland hardwoods, 

 scattering double-crested cormorants that 

 launch from the water with ungainly flight. 

 Tatters of gill nets drape streamside trees, 

 like spiderwebs in dew. And everywhere 

 are "bush hooks," as Bahen calls them. I 

 know them by another name: trot lines, long 

 lengths of cord bearing multiple fish hooks, 

 baited with chicken livers and bloodworms, 

 then left overnight. 



Each bend in the river brings new 

 discovery: little blue herons like statues of 

 lapis, forgotten shad camps rotting near the 

 river's edge, mossy clay bluffs soaring 30 

 feet above the skiff. Near one old bluff, 

 somewhere near Pridgen's Landing, I ferret 

 through a tangled undergrowth of greenbrier 

 and cane, in hopes of finding some remnant 

 of a wharf or pier. There is nothing but the 

 sighing of wind in the trees and the pocks of 

 deer tracks in the sand. 



It's odd that this river stretch remains 



such untrammeled country, centuries after 

 European discovery. In 1524, Florentine 

 explorer Giovanni de Verrazzano made 

 landfall at Cape Fear, recording that "The 

 shoare is all covered with small sand ... and 

 beyond this we saw ... many faire fields 

 and plains, full of mightie great woods ... 

 Palme trees. Bay trees and high Cypress 

 trees ... and the land is full of beastes, as 

 Stags, Deere, and Hares." 



Two years later Lucas Vasquez de 

 Ayllon appeared under the Spanish flag, 

 but hopes for planting a colony along the 

 Cape Fear were dashed along with his 

 vessel, the first European victim of the 

 river's dreaded Frying Pan Shoals. 



The explorer I find most intriguing 

 came nearly a century later. On the 

 morning of Oct. 4, 1662, William Hilton 

 and his ship Adventure threaded the Cape 

 Fear shoals and entered the mouth of the 

 river. Hilton sailed under the rubric of the 

 "Adventurers about Cape Fayre," a group 

 of Massachusetts Bay colonists who hoped 

 to move south. Hilton and his crew 

 explored the river mouth region for three 

 weeks before returning northward. 



Nearly a year later, Hilton was back. 

 This time he sailed from Barbados, in the 

 same ship, but with a commission from 

 land-starved islanders to explore the Cape 

 Fear's possibilities as a colony site. Hilton 

 cleared the rivermouth on Oct. 16, 1663, 

 and rambled the river and its tributaries for 

 nearly eight weeks. Traveling past the 

 present-day Wilmington waterfront, Hilton 

 explored the Brunswick River and Smith's 

 Creek. He made long forays up the Cape 

 Fear's northeast branch, and described the 

 region in a fine report. 



The natives were friendly; in fact, 

 they acted as guides, and helped provision 

 the sailors with a "great store" of fresh 

 mullet, shad, bass and "several other sorts 

 of very good, well-tasted fish." On the 

 banks of the Northeast Cape Fear, Hilton 

 reported finding "as good tracts of land, 

 dry, well wooded, pleasant and delightful 

 as we have seen any where in the world." 



In places, Hilton wrote, the woods 

 were "thin of Timber, except here and 

 there a very great Oak, and full of Grasse, 



commonly as high as a man's middle, and 

 in many places to his shoulders where we 

 saw many Deer and Turkies; also one Deer 

 with very large horns, and great in body, 

 therefore called it Stag-Park: it being a very 

 pleasant and delightful place, we travelled 

 in it several miles, but saw no end thereof." 

 These savannahs, long since disappeared 

 from the region, would make fine pasture. 



The company reported "Partridges 

 great store, Cranes abundance, Conies 

 (rabbits), which we saw in several places; 

 we heard several Wolves howling in the 

 woods, and saw where they had torn a 

 Deer to pieces." Hilton's report is a roll call 

 of long- vanished animals, from gray 

 wolves to the jewel-like Carolina para- 

 keets, or "Parrakeeto's," that thronged the 

 Cape Fear woods in "great flocks." 

 Alligators the length of a horse sulked in 

 rivers and lakes near the sea their scaly 

 backs "impenitrible, refusing a Musquet 

 Bullet to pierce it." 



I can't help but wonder what Hilton 

 would think of a metal johnboat, thrum- 

 ming downstream with the unmistakable 

 growl of an outboard motor. Three 

 centuries have brought much change to the 

 lower Cape Fear. Carolina parakeets have 

 long since disappeared from North 

 Carolina; gray wolves were driven from 

 the coastal plain and the piedmont into the 

 dark recesses of the mountains, where a 

 few hung on into the early 20th century. 

 But in places the green palisades that line 

 the river still hint at the forests that met and 

 so impressed, the men of the Adventure. 



AT TIMES, I CAN EASILY 

 IMAGINE the land that greeted Hilton. 

 Our tiny craft passes along river banks 

 where cypress knees line the shore like 

 nature's bulkheads. Northern parula 

 warblers buzz from the treetops. We cmise 

 in the constant company of turkey vultures 

 and ospreys, riding unseen currents above 

 the trees. At the Thoroughfare, a tree- 

 choked channel that connects the Cape 

 Fear to the Black River, an anhinga perches 

 in a snag, its glossy black wings spread out 

 in the sun. 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 9 



