Rainy weather kept me within doors until Friday, the 7th of January, when I rowed down White Oak River to Bogue Inlet, and turned into the beach thoroughfare, which led me three miles and a half to Bear Inlet. My course now lay through creeks among the marshes to the Stand-Back, near the mainland, where the tides between the two inlets head. Across this shoal spot I traversed tortuous watercourses with mud flats, from which beds of sharp raccoon oysters projected and scraped the keel of my boat.
The sea was now approached from the mainland to Brown's Inlet, where the tide ran like a mill-race, swinging my canoe in great circles as I crossed it to the lower side. Here I took the widest thoroughfare, and left the beach only to retrace my steps to follow one nearer the strand, which conducted me to the end of the natural system of watercourses, where I found a ditch, dug seventy years before, which connected the last system of waters with another series of creeks that emptied their waters into New River Inlet.
Emerging from the marshes, my course led me away from New River Inlet, across open sheets of water to the mainland, where Dr. Ward's cotton plantation occupied a large and cultivated area in the wilderness. It was nearly two miles from his estate down to the inlet. The intervening flats among the island marshes of New River were covered with natural beds of oysters, upon which the canoe scraped as I crossed to the narrow entrance of Stump Sound. Upon rounding a point of land I found, snugly ensconced in a grove, the cot of an oysterman, Captain Risley Lewis, who, after informing me that his was the last habitation to be found in that vicinity, pressed me to be his guest.
The next day proved one of trial to patience and muscle. The narrow watercourses, which like a spider's web penetrate the marshes with numerous small sheets of water, made travelling a most difficult task. At times I was lost, again my canoe was lodged upon oyster-beds in the shallow ponds of water, the mud bottoms of which would not hear my weight if I attempted to get overboard to lighten the little craft.
Alligator Lake, two miles in width, was crossed without seeing an alligator. Saurians are first met with, as the traveller proceeds south, in the vicinity of Alligator Creek and the Neuse River, in the latitude of Pamplico Sound. During the cold weather they hide themselves in the soft, muddy bottoms of creeks and lagoons. All the negroes, and many of the white people of the south, assert, that when captured in his winter bed, this huge reptile's stomach contains the hard knot of a pine-tree; but for what purpose he swallows it they are at a loss to explain.
In twelve miles of tortuous windings there appeared but one sign of human life — a little cabin on a ridge of upland among the fringe of marshes that bordered on Alligator Lake. It was cheering to a lonely canoeist to see this house, and the clearing around it with the season's crop of corn in stacks dotting the field. All this region is called Stump Sound; but that sheet of water is a well-defined, narrow, lake-like watercourse, which was entered not long after I debouched from Alligator Lake. Stump Inlet having closed up eighteen months before my visit, the sound and its tributaries received tidal water from New Topsail Inlet.
It was a cold and rainy evening when I sought shelter in an old boat-house, at a landing on Topsail Sound, soon after leaving Stump Sound. While preparing for the night's camp, the son of the proprietor of the plantation discovered the, to him, unheard-of spectacle of a paper boat upon the gravelly strand. Filled with curiosity and delight, he dragged me, paddle in hand, through an avenue of trees to a hill upon which a large house was located. This was the boy's home. Leaving me on the broad steps of the veranda, he rushed into the hall, shouting to the family, "Here's a sailor who has come from the north in a PAPER boat."
This piece of intelligence roused the good people to merriment. "Impossible!" "A boat made of paper!" "Nonsense!"
The boy, however, would not be put down. "But it is made of paper, I tell you; for I pinched it and stuck my nails into it," he replied earnestly.
"You are crazy, my boy," some one responded; "a paper boat never could go through these sounds, the coon oysters would cut it in pieces. Now tell us, is the sailor made of paper, like his boat?"