at Camden, and
whose good fame was never tarnished by a single unworthy action."

[Illustration: FAIRFAX, CAMDEN COUNTY, THE HOME OF GENERAL GREGORY]

The Sir Walter Raleigh Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution have
within the past year obtained from the United States government a simple
stone which they have had placed to mark the grave of this gallant
officer, who lies buried in the family graveyard at Fairfax.

CHAPTER XIII

PERQUIMANS COUNTY--"LAND OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN," AND THE COLONIAL TOWN OF
HERTFORD

From its hidden source in the southern fringe of the far-famed Dismal
Swamp, the Perquimans River, lovely as its Indian name, which, being
interpreted, signifies "the land of beautiful women," comes winding
down. Past marshes green with flags and rushes and starred with flowers
of every hue, through forests dense with pine and cypress, with gum and
juniper, the amber waters of the ancient stream pursue their tranquil
way. Lazily, but steadily and untiringly, the river journeys on in
obedience to the eternal, insistent call of the sea, till its waves,
meeting and mingling with those of the great sound and its numerous
tributaries, finally find their way through the sand bars that bound our
coast, to the stormy Atlantic.

Save for the fields of corn and cotton that lie along its banks, and an
occasional sawmill whose whirring wheels break at long intervals the
silence of its wooded shores, the peaceful river through the greater
part of its way is undisturbed by signs of man's presence. Only twice in
its course do its banks resound to the hum of town and village life,
once when shortly emerging from the Great Swamp, the river in its
winding flows by the sleepy little Quaker village of Belvidere; and
again when its tranquility is suddenly broken by the stir and bustle of
mill and factory, upon whose existence depends the prosperity of the old
colonial town of Hertford. There, the river, suddenly as wide awake as
the beautiful town by which it flows, changes its narrow, tortuous,
leisurely course, and broadening out from a slender stream, sweeps on to
the sea, a river grown, whose shores from this point on lie apart from
each other a distance of more than a mile.

Of all the streams that flow down to the sea from Albemarle, none
exceeds in beauty or historic interest the lovely Perquimans River. On
its eastern banks lies Durant's Neck, the home of George Durant, the
first settler in our State, who in