trusted not too many eggs to one basket, imparted
special facilities for escaping pursuit and minimizing loss. A
representative from Maryland at about this time presented in the House
a memorial from Baltimore merchants, stating that "in consequence of
the strict blockade of our bays and rivers the private-armed service
is much discouraged," and submitting the expediency "of offering a
bounty for the destruction of enemy's vessels;" a suggestion the very
extravagance of which indicates more than words the extent of the
depression felt. The price of salt in Baltimore, in November, 1814,
was five dollars the bushel. In Charleston it was the same, while just
across the Spanish border, at Amelia Island, thronged with foreign
merchant ships, it was selling at seventy cents.[208]

Such a contrast, which must necessarily be reproduced in other
articles not indigenous, accounts at once for the smuggling deplored
by Captain Campbell, and at the same time testifies both to the
efficacy of the blockade and to the pressure exercised upon the
inland navigation by the outside British national cruisers and
privateers. This one instance, affecting one of the prime necessaries
of life, certifies to the stringent exclusion from the sea of the
coast on which Charleston was the chief seaport. Captain Dent,
commanding this naval district, alludes to the constant presence of
blockaders, and occasionally to vessels taken outside by them, chased
ashore, or intercepted in various inlets; narrating particularly the
singular incident that, despite his remonstrances, a flag of truce was
sent on board the enemy by local authorities to negotiate a purchase
of goods thus captured.[209] This unmilitary proceeding, which evinces
the necessities of the neighborhood, was of course immediately stopped
by the Government.

A somewhat singular incidental circumstance, supporting the other
inferences, is found in the spasmodic elevation of the North Carolina
coast into momentary commercial consequence as a place of entry and
deposit; not indeed to a very great extent, but ameliorating to a
slight degree the deprivation of the regions lying north and
south,--the neighborhood of Charleston on the one hand, of Richmond
and Baltimore on the other. "The waters of North Carolina, from
Wilmington to Ocracoke, though not favorable to commerce in time of
peace, by reason of their shallowness and the danger of the coast,
became important and useful in time of war, an