- HABITS OF BIRDS. - STORM AT
HATTERAS INLET - MILES OF WRECKS. - THE YACHT JULIA
SEARCHING FOR THE PAPER CANOE. - CHASED BY PORPOISES.
- MARSH TACKIES. - OCRACOKE INLET. - A GRAVE-YARD
BEING SWALLOWED UP BY THE SEA. - CORE SOUND. - THREE
WEDDINGS AT HUNTING QUARTERS. - MOREHEAD CITY. -
NEWBERN. - SWANSBORO. - A PEA-NUT PLANTATION. - THE
ROUTE TO CAPE FEAR.
Cape Hatteras is the apex of a
triangle. It is the easternmost part of the
state of North Carolina, and it extends farther
into the ocean than any Atlantic cape of the
United States. It presents a low, broad, sandy
point to the sea, and for several miles beyond it,
in the ocean, are the dangerous Diamond Shoals,
the dread of the mariner.
The Gulf Stream, with its river-like current
of water flowing northward from the Gulf of
Mexico, in its oscillations from east to west
frequently approaches to within eighteen or twenty
miles of the cape, filling a large area of
atmosphere with its warmth, and causing frequent
local disturbances. The weather never remains
long in a settled state. As most vessels try to
make Hatteras Light, to ascertain their true
position, &c., and because it juts out so far into the
Atlantic, the locality has become the scene of
many wrecks, and the beach, from the cape
down to Hatteras Inlet, fourteen miles, is strewn
with the fragments of vessels.
The coast runs north and south above, and
east and west south of the cape.
