sank below the horizon; then gradually drawing in to the beach, the two
clumps of trees of north and south Chicamicomico came into view. A
life-saving station had recently been erected north of the first grove,
and there is another fourteen miles further south. The two Chicamicomico
settlements of scattered houses are each nearly a mile in length, and
are separated by a high, bald sand-beach of about the same length, which
was once heavily wooded; but the wind has blown the sand into the forest
and destroyed it. A wind-mill in each village raised its weird arms to
the breeze.

Three miles further down is Kitty Midget's Hammock, where a few red
cedars and some remains of live-oaks tell of the extensive forest that
once covered the beach. Here Captain Abraham Hooper lives, and occupies
himself in fishing with nets in the ocean for blue-fish, which are
salted down and sent to the inland towns for a market. I had drawn my
boat into the sedge to secure a night's shelter, when the old captain on
his rounds captured me. The change from a bed in the damp sedge to the
inside seat of the largest fireplace I had ever beheld, was indeed a
pleasant one. Its inviting front covered almost one side of the room.
While the fire flashed up the wide chimney, I sat inside the fireplace
with the three children of my host, and enjoyed the genial glow which
arose from the fragments of the wreck of a vessel which had pounded
herself to death upon the strand near Kitty Midget's Hammock. How
curiously those white-haired children watched the man who had come so
far in a paper boat! "Why did not the paper boat soak to pieces?" they
asked. Each explanation seemed but to puzzle them the more; and I found
myself in much the same condition of mind when trying to make some
discoveries concerning Kitty Midget. She must, however, have lived
somewhere on Clark's Beach long before the present proprietor was born.
We spent the next day fishing with nets in the surf for blue-fish, it
being about the last day of their stay in that vicinity. They go south
as far as Cape Hatteras, and then disappear in deep water; while the
great flocks of gulls, that accompany them to gather the remnants of
fish they scatter in their savage meals, rise in the air and fly rapidly
away in search of other dainties.

On Thursday I set out for Cape Hatteras. The old sailor's song, that--

"Hatteras has a blow in store
For those who pass her howling door,"

has far more