Cruising Along the Southern Coast 
By FRED A. OLDS 
E ARLY May, in eastern North Carolina, 
along the splendid shore line which pro¬ 
jects its three capes. Fear, Lookout and 
Hatteras, further out toward the Gulf Stream 
than any other portion of the shore line north of 
Florida, is a splendid time to pay a visit to that 
watery world, and I have just returned from a 
fifteen days’ journey in which practically all the 
time was spent on or beside the water, sometimes 
salt and sometimes fresh, and during which a 
very careful view was taken of the fish and game 
life, fur, fin and feather, and a capital idea ob¬ 
tained of what work the Audubon Society and 
the State, Fish and Oyster Commissions are 
doing. 
Ten years ago I went along that coast and 
never saw a dozen gulls from Currituck Sound 
to Beaufort. On this trip I saw thousands, and 
passed very near Gull Shoal, also by Legged 
Lump, which is a great place for the breeding 
of birds, particularly terns; saw the great colony 
of white cranes in the lake at the Orton plan¬ 
tation, below Wilmington, and found partridges 
and no end of squirrels along the sand banks 
which guard the shore from the sea. Not a 
few wild geese and many ducks of various 
kinds had stayed behind and seemed to be en¬ 
joying themselves. 
The long journey covered 425 miles by water 
and took in all the coast. The trip down the 
Cape Fear River was full of interest. People 
from the North are fascinated by it, and these 
will find a visit to the famous Orton planta¬ 
tion, the great mansion which was built in 1725. 
to be one of the best peeps they can get at the 
old colonial life when the great landholders and 
slaveowners lived like lords. “King Roger" 
Moore, as he was locally known, the builder of 
Orton, had three wives and twenty-two children, 
and when he traveled through Wilmington on 
his way between his Orton plantation and his 
summer home at Rocky Point, some twenty 
miles away, he quite naturally attracted public 
notice. This sort of thing he disliked, and so 
he set the slaves at work to cut a road, practi¬ 
cally straight, between the two points, leaving 
Wilmington some miles to the westward, and 
this yet remains and is called King Roger’s 
road. Whenever he moved, as was the case 
twice a year, his wives and children were trans¬ 
ported in carriages, and all the household furni¬ 
ture, etc., was borne on the heads of slaves, alto¬ 
gether there being a large procession, and in 
this way he flanked Wilmington and had the 
quiet he so much liked. He was troubled a little 
by pirates and by the Spaniards, and the Indians 
gave him annoyance, attacking his place once 
and stealing his cattle, taking these across the 
river to a point where the famous Confederate 
Fort Fisher stood in later years, and there 
feasted until King Roger, with his armed slaves 
and neighbors, fell upon them one Sunday and 
killed the last man. 
The cranes referred to have a fine colony at 
this farm, where there is a lake covering many 
hundred acres, in which stand some of the 
largest cypress trees in North Carolina. On the 
largest of these is an eagle’s nest which the 
records show has been continuously occupied 
for much over one hundred years. 
Lower down the river at its mouth is Bald- 
head or Smith’s Island, with its lighthouse and 
lifesaving station. This is the land part of Cape 
Fear, and it is only thirty-fiye miles from the 
tip of the cape to the inner edge of the gulf 
stream, though the latter has swung in nearer 
the land this year than in a long period, and in 
fact its course in front of the whole North Caro¬ 
lina coast has been so erratic that it was re¬ 
ported to me at Cape Lookout and Cape Hat¬ 
teras. This Baldhead Island contains thousands 
of palmettoes fifty feet high, and is as tropical 
as any point in Florida north of Palm Beach. 
Forty-seven kinds of vegetation not found on 
the mainland are said to be upon it. The num¬ 
ber of squirrels and raccoons is unlimited. The 
growth of live oak is magnificent. It is a rare 
place for sport, both on land and water. 
The next place visited was New River, in 
Onslow county, a singular stream, very like 
many of the rivers in Florida. It really starts 
at Jacksonville, where several narrow but deep 
streams converge and small vessels come right 
in from the ocean to that place. Half a mile 
below Jacksonville the river broadens to a mile, 
and a little lower down it is five miles wide. It 
is really an estuary. It is full of fish, as we 
found black bass, crappies—as the people there 
call the speckled perch—and wall-eyed pike. 
Very great black bass of the large-mouth variety 
are taken up to eight and ten pounds. The 
oysters from this river are among the largest in 
the United States. Fish in the New River will 
rise at the fly and are caught by skittering and 
with angleworms and shrimp. The river being 
partly salt and partly fresh, any kind of fishing 
may be had. Along the shore there is an abund¬ 
ance of game, and a gentleman told us that he 
and his little brother had killed fifty-nine squir¬ 
rels in a day. There are deer, turkeys, etc., and 
one of our friends there said he had killed five 
turkeys in two shots. He has a little dog which 
is extremely clever with the turkeys. One of 
our party remarked that he had been hunting 
turkeys about ten years and averaged twenty a 
year during that period. He intends to hunt in 
the New River section next season. That sec¬ 
tion §eems to be very little known to sportsmen 
from the North, and they will find it a good 
opening next November. Living is cheap and 
the climate is fine. The banks of the stream are 
very beautiful, being in the main high, and there 
are many farmhouses along them. Sportsmen 
coming South in their own craft can come right 
into the river from the sea. Quite often there 
are houseboats on the river used by hunting 
parties from the up-country part of the State. 
Next we went to Beaufort, which is the head¬ 
quarters of the State oyster commissioner. 
From Beaufort our way lay through the 
“Straits,’’ and at Marshallburg the Maryland 
soft crab men were making shipments. Along 
all the stretch of coast from Oregon inlet to 
Beaufort there are only a dozen negroes, Strange 
to say. When we passed the “Straits’’ we began 
to see club houses along the shore, the first one 
being Binney’s. New' Yorkers are interested in 
a great many of these all the way from Curri¬ 
tuck Sound down. We began also to see- the 
duck and brant blinds built out from the shore. 
We swung out into Pamlico Sound. After we 
passed Harbor Island and its lighthouse and 
made our way to Ocracoke, on the way passing 1 
thousands of gulls. On every shoal and sand 
lump were these birds. Protection has brought • 
them back again. Great numbers of the ugly 
cormorants or “nigger geese,” as the natives 
term them, were seen. They have a curious 
habit of always dipping down into the water j 
before starting on a flight and moistening the ] 
tail feathers. On our way we saw many fish 
eagles and numbers of fish hawks. These hawks 
and the gulls seemed to be very busy with the 
fish. Of all the men we met, with one excep¬ 
tion, every one seemed to like the presence of 
the gulls because they show where the fish are. j 
Ocracoke is one of the most singular places 
in the country. There is not a street or a side¬ 
walk in it. The distance from the sea to the j 
sound is very narrow. The trees are mainly live 
oak. with wide tops, all wind blown. There is 
a very picturesque lighthouse, built in 1790, in 
the midst of the town, and there is a little bay 
shaped exactly like a hand mirror, which divides 
the town into two parts. From this point we 
made our way to Cape Hatteras, passing Hat¬ 
teras Inlet and going very near Legged Lump, j 
where we saw thousands of protected birds 
We found that Secretary Pearson, of the Audu¬ 
bon Society, had but lately been there in the 
Thayer, the Society’s boat, which lies at Cape 
Hatteras. and also that the State Geologist, 
