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. The old light-house had been replaced by the finest light-tower I
had ever examined, which was completed in 1870. It is one hundred and
ninety feet in height, and shows a white, revolving light.

Body Island Light, though forty feet less in elevation, is frequently
seen by the Hatteras light-keeper, while the splendid Hatteras Light had
been seen but once by Captain Hatzel, of Body Island. One nautical mile
south of Hatteras Light is a small beacon light-tower, which is of great
service to the coasting-vessels that pass it in following the
eighteen-feet curve of the cape two miles from the land inside of
Diamond Shoals.

While speaking of light-houses, it may be interesting to naturalists who
live far inland to know that while (as they are well aware) thousands of
birds are killed annually during their flights by striking against
telegraphic wires, many wild-fowls are also destroyed by dashing against
the lanterns of the light-towers during the night. While at Body Island
Beach, Captain Hatzel remarked to me that, during the first winter after
the new light-tower was completed, the snow-geese, which winter on the
island, would frequently at night strike the thick glass panes of the
chamber, and fall senseless upon the floor of the gallery. The second
season they did not in a single instance repeat the mistake, but had
seemingly become educated to the character of the danger.

I have seen one lantern damaged to the amount of five hundred dollars,
by a goose breaking a pane of glass and striking heavily upon the costly
lens which surrounds the lamp. Light-keepers sometimes sit upon the
gallery, and, looking along the pathway of light which shoots into the
outer darkness over their heads, will see a few dark specks approaching
them in this beam of radiance. T