V.
VISITING THE SUNNY SOUTH.
Sir Walter Raleigh—Roanoke Island—Virginia Dare—Potatoes—Tobacco—Carolina—Cape Hatteras—Cyclones—Wilmington—Fort Fisher—Blockade Running—Charleston—Palmetto Trees—John C. Calhoun—Fort Moultrie—Osceola's Grave—Fort Sumter—Opening of the Civil War—The Swamp Angel—St. Michael's Church—Port Royal—Savannah—General Oglethorpe—Count Pulaski—Fort Pulaski—Bonaventure Cemetery—Okifenokee Swamp—Jacksonville—The Alligator—Oranges—Land of Flowers—Juan Ponce de Leon—Ferdinand de Soto—The Huguenots—Pedro Menendez—Dominique de Gourgues—Florida Peculiarities—Cumberland Sound—St. Mary's River—Cumberland Island—Jekyll Island—Amelia Island—Fernandina—Dungeness—General Greene—Light Horse Harry—St. Augustine—Matanzas River—Anastasia Island—Coquina—Fort San Marco—Fort Marion—Grand Hotels—Dade's Massacre—Coa-coo-chee, the Wildcat—Ormond—Daytona—New Smyrna—The Southern Cassadega—Indian River—Titusville—Rockledge—Fort Pierce—Jupiter Inlet—Palm Beach—Miami—Biscayne Bay—St. John's River—Mandarin—Palatka—Ocklawaha River—Lake Apopka—Lake Eustis Region—Ocala—The Silver Spring—Navigating the Ocklawaha—Lake George—Volusia—Lake Monroe—Enterprise—Sanford—Winter Park—Orlando—Lake Tohopekaliga—Kissimmee River—Lake Okeechobee—The Everglades—Lake Arpeika—The Seminoles—Suwanee River—Cedar Key—Tallahassee—Achille Murat—Wakulla Spring—Appalachicola—Pensacola—Homosassa—Tampa—Charlotte Harbor—Punta Gorda—Caloosahatchie River—Fort Myers—Cape Romano—Cape Sable—Florida Keys—Coral Building—The Gulf Stream—Key West—Fort Taylor—Sand Key—Dry Tortugas—Fort Jefferson—Florida Attractions.
CAROLINA.
Sir Walter Raleigh, of chivalrous memory, sent the first English colony to America in the sixteenth century. He was a half-brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the English explorer, and had previously accompanied Gilbert to Newfoundland. He sent out an expedition in 1584, which selected Roanoke Island, south of the Chesapeake, for a settlement, and for this enterprise Queen Elizabeth knighted Raleigh, gave him a grant of the whole country, and directed that the new land be named in her honor, Virginia. In 1585-86 colonizing expeditions were sent to Roanoke, but they did not prosper. The colonists quarrelled with the Indians, and in the latter year the Governor returned to England for provisions and reinforcements, leaving behind with the colony his daughter, Mrs. Dare, and a granddaughter, nine days old, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the new land. Then came the Spanish Armada to conquer England, and the long war with Spain. Nobody went to succor the little band of exiles on Roanoke Island for three years, and when they did, the settlement was obliterated, the hundred colonists and little Virginia Dare had disappeared, and no tidings of them were ever obtained. Thus perished Raleigh's colony; and, his means being exhausted, he was discouraged and sent no more expeditions out to America. His enterprise failed in making a permanent settlement, but it gave two priceless gifts to Europe. The returning Governor took back to England the potato, which Raleigh planted on his Irish estate and which has proved the salvation of old Erin, and also the Virginia tobacco, which he taught the people to smoke, and the fragrant weed became the solace of the world.
No further attempts at colonization were made until the seventeenth century, when new grants were issued, and the country was named Carolina in honor of King Charles I. The Atlantic Coast south of the Chesapeake Bay entrance is low and bordered by sand beaches, which for most of the distance in front of North Carolina are far eastward of the mainland, with broad sounds and river estuaries between. These long and narrow beaches protrude in some cases a hundred miles into the ocean and form dangerous shoals, the extensive Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds being enclosed by them, the former stretching fifty miles and the latter seventy-five miles into the land. Out in front of Pamlico Sound projects the shoulder of Cape Hatteras into the Atlantic, the outer point of a low, sandy island, with shoals extending far beyond it, and marked by the great beacon of this dangerous coast, a flashing light one hundred and ninety feet high. Here is the principal storm factory of the southern coast, noted for cyclonic disturbances and dreaded by the mariner. Upon the outer Diamond Shoals the Government has long tried in vain to erect a lighthouse. A lightship is kept there, but is frequently blown from her moorings and drifts ashore. The Gulf Stream, coming with warm and speedy current up from Florida, is here diverged out into the ocean by the shoulder of Hatteras; and, similarly, the whirling West India cyclones of enormous area come along with their resistless energy, destroying everything in their paths. In the terrific hurricane of the autumn of 1899 a wind velocity of one hundred and sixty miles an hour was reached momentarily, and the anemometer at Hatteras was blown down after having recorded a velocity of one hundred and twenty miles. The actual force exerted by one of these great cyclones in its work of devastation, which uproots trees, demolishes buildings and strews the coast with wrecks, has been calculated as equalling one thousand million horse-power.
WILMINGTON AND FORT FISHER.
The interior of North Carolina adjoining the Sounds is largely swamp land, and the broad belt of forest, chiefly pines, which parallels the coast all along the Atlantic seaboard. Through this region the railway extends southward from Virginia past Weldon to Wilmington, an uninteresting route among the swamps and pine lands, showing sparse settlement and poor agriculture, the wood paths exhibiting an occasional ox-team or a stray horseman going home with his supplies from the cross-roads store, a typical representative of the "tar-heels of Carolina." The railway crosses the deep valley of Roanoke River, and then over the Tar and Neuse Rivers, traversing the extensive district that provides the world's greatest supply of naval stores—the tar, pitch, turpentine, rosin and timber that are so largely shipped out of the Cape Fear River from Wilmington. This is the chief city of North Carolina, having about twenty thousand people, and is located on the Cape Fear River twenty-six miles from its mouth. The city spreads along the eastern shore upon the peninsula between it and the ocean. The first settlement antedates the Revolution, when the inhabitants, who were sturdy patriots, drove out the royal Governor and made Fort Johnson, at the mouth of the river, an American stronghold. Upon the secession of the Carolinas in 1860-61 this fort was occupied by the Confederates and replaced by the larger work on Federal Point, between the river and the sea, known as Fort Fisher. Owing to the peculiar location and ease of entrance, the Cape Fear River became famous in the Civil War as a haven for blockade-runners, the effective defense made by Fort Fisher fully protecting this traffic. As the Union blockade of the Southern harbors became more completely effective with the progress of the war, this finally was about the only port that could be entered, and an enormous traffic was kept up between Wilmington and Nassau, on the British island of New Providence, in the Bahamas, not far away, some three hundred fleet foreign steamships safely running the blockade into Cape Fear River during 1863 and 1864. The notoriety of this traffic, from which enormous profits were made, became world-wide, and it was decided late in 1864 that Fort Fisher had to be captured, in order to make the Southern blockade entirely effective. A joint land and naval attack was made by General Butler and Admiral Porter in December, 1864, but they were obliged to retire without seriously damaging the fort. Then General Butler ineffectively attempted to blow up the fort by exploding a powder-boat near it. Finally a new expedition was landed in January, 1865, under General Terry, and in coöperation with the navy, which made a fierce bombardment, they captured the fort on the 15th, after severe loss, the works being partially destroyed the following day by the accidental explosion of the powder magazine. This capture ended the blockade-running at Wilmington, and had much to do with precipitating the fall of Richmond in the following April.