While approaching the low Portsmouth shore
of the sound, flocks of Canada geese flew within
pistol-shot of my head. A man in a dug-out
canoe told me that the gunners of the village
had reared from the egg a flock of wild geese
which now aggregated some seven or eight
hundred birds, and that these now flying about were
used to decoy their wild relatives.
Near the beach a sandy hill had been the place
of sepulture for the inhabitants of other
generations, but for years past the tidal current had
been cutting the shore away until coffin after
coffin with its contents had been washed into
the sound. Captain Isaac S. Jennings, of Ocean
County, New Jersey, had described this spot to
me as follows:
"I landed at Portsmouth and examined this
curious burial-ground. Here by the water were
the remains of the fathers, mothers, brothers,
and sisters of the people of the village so near at
hand; yet these dismal relics of their ancestors
were allowed to be stolen away piecemeal by
the encroaching ocean. While I gazed sadly
upon the strata of coffins protruding from the
banks, shining objects like jewels seemed to be
sparkling from between the cracks of their
fractured sides; and as I tore away the rotten wood,
rows of toads were discovered sitting in
solemn council, their bright eyes peering from
among the debris of bones and decomposed
substances."
Portsmouth Island is nearly eight miles long.
Whalebone Inlet is at its lower end, but is too
shallow to be of any service to commerce.
Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets admit sea-going
vessels. It is thirty-eight miles from Whalebone
Inlet to Cape Lookout, which projects like a
wedge into the sea nearly three miles from the
mainland, and there is not another passage
through the narrow beach in all that distance
that is of any use to the mariner. Following
the trend of the coast for eleven miles from the
point of Cape Lookout, there is an inlet, but,
from the character of its channel and its
shallowness, it is not of much value.
Leaving Portsmouth, the canoe entered Core
Sound, which grew narrower as the shoals inside
of Whalebone Inlet were crossed, partly by
rowing and partly by wading on the sand-flats. As
night came on, a barren stretch of beach on my
left hand was followed until I espied the only
house within a distance of sixteen miles along
the sea. It was occupied by a coasting skipper,
whose fine little schooner was anchored a long
distance from the land on account of the
shoalness of the water.
