the festivities. But his 

 host, a storekeeper named 

 William Stewart, reassur- 

 ed him. 



"Invitation!" the 

 storekeeper exclaimed. 

 "Why, no one ever gives 

 out invitations in Hunting 

 Quarters. When there is to 

 be a 'jollification' of any 

 sort, everybody goes to the 

 house without being asked. 

 You see, we are all great 

 neighbors here. Up at 

 Newbern and at Beaufort, 

 and other great cities, 

 people have their ways, 

 but here all are friends." 



After a night of 

 dancing and revelry. 

 Bishop paddled on to 

 Harkers Island and 



Morehead City. Bishop spent Christmas 

 in New Bern, then continued south 

 along Onslow Bay. 



"The watercourses now became 

 more intricate, growing narrower as I 

 rowed southward," he wrote. "The open 

 waters of the sound were left behind, 

 and I entered a labyrinth of creeks and 

 small sheets of water, which form a 

 network in the marshes between the 

 sandy beach-islands and the mainland 

 all the way to Cape Fear River." 



Far more than on the Outer Banks, 

 Bishop observed along the southerly 

 barrier islands the poverty and ruin 

 inherited from the Civil War. He stayed 

 at mullet camps, oystermen's cottages 

 and a peanut farmer's manor house, 

 but he never found himself the butt of 

 ill will. Near Rich Inlet, a Confederate 

 veteran named Mosely greeted him, 

 saying, "The war is over ... and any 

 northern gentleman is welcome to 

 what we have left." 



Beyond Myrtle Sound, the seacoast 

 no longer offered protection to a small 

 craft like the Santa Theresa. Rather 

 than risk the Atlantic, Bishop traveled 

 by cart and railroad 40 miles west to 

 Lake Waccamaw, the source of the 

 Waccamaw River. He would end his 

 journey through North Carolina by 

 descending that "long and crooked 

 river with its dark cypress waters" 

 toward South Carolina's seacoast. 



The Waccamaw in flood season 

 nearly overwhelmed the Santa Theresa. 



"Down the tortuous, black, rolling 

 current went the paper canoe," Bishop 

 wrote, "with a giant forest covering 

 the great swamp and screening me 

 from the light of day. ... Festoons of 

 gray Spanish moss hung from the weird 

 limbs of monster trees, giving a funeral 

 aspect to the gloomy forest, while the 

 owls hooted as though it were night." 



An exhausted Bishop reached the 

 river's first dwelling 20 miles down- 



stream at Old Dock, then 

 continued the next morning 

 "into a landless region of 

 sky, trees and water." Ten 

 miles later, he came to 

 several small farms as the 

 swampy riverbottom gave 

 way to an upland pine forest. 

 He spent the night at Pireway 

 Ferry, then crossed the state 

 line into South Carolina. He 

 reached the Gulf of Mexico 

 on March 26, 1875. 



Reading a copy of 

 "Voyage of the Paper 

 Canoe" that I found in the 

 North Carolina Collection, 

 the University of North 

 Carolina's magnificent 

 repository of our state's 

 literary heritage, I was hard- 

 pressed to recognize today's 

 Outer Banks. The great oyster bays have 

 vanished. Most of the maritime forests 

 have been cleared. Condominiums and 

 hotels now overshadow fish camps. 



But when my brother and I joined 

 Bishop's path at the Waccamaw, we 

 found one of America's last great 

 swamp forests. Little seemed different 

 from Bishop's 1874 description. The 

 shade of cypress and water oak darkened 

 the river. Gun-metal gray cottonmouths 

 glided past our boat and owls criss- 

 crossed above us. We paddled beneath 

 a flock of ibis roosting in the treetops, 

 and we gawked at an alligator gnawing 

 leisurely on a deer carcass. We never 

 saw another soul. 



Emerging from the swamp at 

 Crusoe Island, I counted my blessings 

 that there are coastal wild places like 

 the Waccamaw still worth fighting 

 to preserve — and for the spirit of 

 adventure that is renewed in the 

 wilderness. □ 



COASTWA TCH 15 



