es 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. Dreary
sand-hills protected the cottage from the bleak winds of the ocean.

While yet a long distance from the skipper's home, a black object could
be seen crawling up the sides of a mound of white sand, and after it
reached the apex it remained in one position, while I rowed, and waded,
and pulled my canoe towards the shore. When the goal was reached, and
the boat was landed high up among the scrub growth, I shouldered my
blankets and charts, and plodded through the soft soil towards the dark
object, which I now recognized to be a man on a lookout post. He did not
move from his position until I reached the hillock, when he suddenly
slid down the bank and landed at my feet, with a cheery--

"Well, now, I thought it was you. Sez I to myself, That's him,
sure, when I seed you four miles away. Fust thinks I, It's only
a log, or a piece of wrak-stuff afloating. Pretty soon up comes
your head and shoulders into sight; then sez I, It's a man,
sure, but where is his boat? for you see, I couldn't see your
boat, it was so low down in the water. Then I reckoned it was a
man afloating on a log, but arter a while the boat loomed up
too, and I says, I'll be dog-goned if that isn't him. I went up
to Newbern, some time ago, in the schooner, and the people
there said there was a man coming down the coast a-rowing a
paper boat on a