en, glancing at the fine model, she lowered it slowly to
the ground, exclaiming, "I reckon I wouldn't risk my life acrossing a
creek in her."

These people told me that the yacht Julia had stopped there to make
inquiries for me, and had departed for Newbern.

It was more than a mile from the landing to Ocracoke Inlet, and a mile
and three quarters across it to the beach. A straight course from the
landing to the village of Portsmouth, on the lower side of the inlet,
was a distance of five miles, and not one of the hardy watermen, who
thumped the sides of my boat with their hard fists to ascertain its
strength, believed that I could cross the sound to the other village
without rolling over. One kind-hearted oysterman offered to carry
myself and boat to Portsmouth; but as the day was calm, I rowed away
on the five-mile stretch amid doleful prognostications, such as: "That
feller will make a coffin for hisself out of that yere gimcrack of an
egg-shell. It's all a man's life is wurth to go in her," &c.

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 mil