University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
MORE OF THE GENIUS OF THE OLD NORTH STATE.

“We must not forget our pledges,” said the sea-green orator,
as we seated ourselves in a group near the wheel, after supper,
cigars all lighted. “And, if not too full of better stuff, my
friends, I propose to give you the chronicle of the old North State,
of which I have spoken. As I have mentioned already, the
matter is not my own. I gathered it from the correspondence
of a traveller in some of the newspapers. It seemed so truthful,
so appropriate, and confirmed so admirably my own experience,
that I memorized it without any effort.”

No one dissenting, the Alabamian proceeded with his narrative,
very much as follows: —

“`The genius of the old North State,' said he, `is decidedly
masculine. With a large physical development, he is as
conscious of his strength as totally indifferent to its uses. Indifference
is his virtue. He would be as little interested if the
scents which he gave forth were cologne instead of turpentine.
There he stands or lies, an enormous waste of manhood, looking
out upon the Atlantic. His form, though bulky, is angular —
one shoulder rather higher than the other, and one leg standing
awkwardly at ease. His breeches, you perceive, are of the
most antique fashion — equally short and tight. He has evidently
outgrown them, but the evidence is not yet apparent to
his own mind. His meditations have not yet conducted him to
that point, where the necessity of providing himself with a better
fit, a more becoming cut, and a thoroughly new pair, comes
upon him with the force of some sudden supernatural conviction.
When they do, he will receive such a shock as will cover him
with perspiration enough for a thousand years. He stands now,
if you believe me, in pretty nearly the same attitude which he
maintained when they were running the State Line between him

and his northern brother (Virginia) to the great merriment, and
the monstrous guffawing of the latter. He carries still the same
earthen pipe, of mammoth dimensions, in his jaws; and you
may see him, any day, in a fog of his own making, with one hip
resting against a barrel of tar, and with his nose half buried in
a fumigator of turpentine. He is the very model of that sort
of constancy which may at least boast of a certain impregnableness.
His tastes and temper undergo no changes, and are what
they have been from the beginning. The shocks of the world
do not disturb his gravity. He lets its great locomotives pass
by, hurrying his neighbor through existence, and congratulates
himself that no one can force him into the car against his will.
He is content to be the genius of tar and turpentine only. His
native modesty is quite too great to suffer him to pretend to anything
better.

“`The vulgar notion is that this is due wholly to his lack of
energy. But I am clear that it is to be ascribed altogether to his
excessive modesty. He asserts no pretensions at all — he disclaims
most of those which are asserted for him. Some ambitious
members of his household have claimed for him the first
revolutionary movements, and the proper authorship of the Declaration
of Independence. But his deportment has been that
of one who says, “What matter? I did it, or I did not! The
thing is done! Enough! Let us have no botheration.”

“`Do you ask what he does, and what he is? You have the
answer in a nutshell. He is no merchant, no politician, no orator;
but a small planter, and a poor farmer — and his manufactures
are wholly aromatic and spiritual. They consist in turpentine
only, and his modesty suffers him to make no brag even
of this. His farm yields him little more than peas and pumpkins.
His corn will not match with the Virginian's, and that
is by no means a miracle. I have seen a clump of sunflowers
growing near his entrance, and pokcberries and palma-christi
are agreeable varieties in his shrubberies. Of groundnuts he
raises enough to last the children a month at Christmas, and
save enough for next year's acre. His pumpkins are of pretty
good size, though I have not seen them often, and think they
are apt to rot before he can gather them. His cabbage invariably
turns out a collard, from which he so constantly strips the

under leaves that the denuded vegetable grows finally to be almost
as tall as himself. His cotton crops are exceedingly small
— so short in some seasons as not to permit the good wife to
make more than short hose for herself and little ones. His historian
is Shocco Jones.'”

“Where the d—l is Shocco Jones now?” was the inquiry
of the little red-faced native, who tried to appear very
indifferent to all that the orator was saying. “He wrote well,
that Jones. His defence of North Carolina against Tom Jefferson
was the very thing, and I have seen some of his sketches
of the old State that were a shine above Irving's.”

“No doubt! no doubt! Jones and Smith have possibly gone
on a visit to their cousin German, Thompson. To proceed: —

“`His orators are Stanley and Clingman, who are by no
means better than Webster and Calhoun — and his shipping
consists of the “Mary and Sally,” and “Polly Hopkins—'”

“He must have others, for I saw a wreck at Smithville in
1835, on the stern of which I read `Still-Water.'”

“She is there still,” said the orator, “and still-water at that.
She was beached in 1824 — the `Sleeping Beauty' taking her
place, between Squam Island, Duck's Inlet, Old Flats, and
Smithfield, till, lingering too long in the river, the tide fell and
left her on the Hognose Bank, where her beauty is somewhat
on the wane. But to proceed with our authority—”

“Your authority is an abominable falsehood all throughout
— a lie of whole cloth,” said the fiery native — “so let's have no
more of it.”

“Go on! Go on! old Bile! It's prime!” quoth the Texan.
Not heeding either, the Alabamian proceeded as if he were
reading from a book:—

“`Wilmington is his great port of entry — his city by the sea.
Here he carries on some of his largest manufactures, converting
daily into turpentine a thousand barrels of the odoriferous gum.
His dwellings here are of more pretension than elsewhere. He
has lately been doing them up, rebuilding and retouching in a
style that shows that he has suddenly opened his eyes upon
what the world has been doing elsewhere. The change is really
not in unison with his character. It sits unnaturally upon him,
and gives him a slightly fidgetty manner which is no ways prepossessing.

He seems to be impressed with an idea that the
world requires him to bestir himself. He has a certain respect
for the world, and is not unwilling to do what it requires, but he
moves slowly and awkwardly about it, and he must not be hurried.
If he can accomplish the new duty without disparaging
the old habit, he has no objection, but he seems quite unwilling
to give up his pipe, his tar barrel, and his luxurious position in
the shade, just on the outer edge of the sunshine. The superficial
observer thinks him lazy rather than luxurious. But this is
scandal surely. I am willing to admit that he has a Dutch infusion
in his veins, which antagonizes the naturally mercurial
characteristics of the South; but it is really a Dutch taste, rather
than Dutch phlegm, which is at the bottom of his failings.

“`It has been gravely proposed to neutralize his deficiencies
through a foreign graffing, and by the introduction of a colony
from Bluffton in South Carolina — otherwise called Little Gascony
— and no doubt an amalgamation with some of the tribes of
that impatient little settlement would work such a change in his
constitution as might lead to the most active demonstrations. It
would be as the yeast in the dough, the hops in the beer, the
cayenne in the broth. The dish and drink would become rarely
palatable with such an infusion.

“`But, even if we allow our brother to be indolent, or apathetic,
we are constrained to say that he is not without his virtues.
His chief misfortune is, that knowing them to be such, he has
grown rather excessive in their indulgence. His prudence is
one of his virtues. For example, he will owe no money to his
neighbors at a season when states beggar themselves in the
wildest speculations, and dishonor themselves through a base
feeling of the burden of their debts. Speculation can not seduce
him into following their foolish and mean examples. He believes
in none of the fashionable bubbles. Fancy stocks have
no attractions for him. He rubs his forehead, feels his pockets,
and remembers his old sagacity. Sometimes he has been beguiled
for a moment, but a moment only, and his repentance followed
soon. He has been known, for example, to lay down a
railway, and has taken it up again, the more effectually to make
himself sure of being able to meet his contracts. His logic is
doubtful perhaps, his purpose and policy never. You can not

gull him into banks, though, strange to say, he thinks Nick Biddle
an ill-used man, and still halts with a face looking too much
in the direction of Whiggery. And, with the grateful smell of
his turpentine factories always in his nostrils, though with no
other interest in manufactures, you can not persuade him that a
protective tariff is any such monstrous bugbear, as when it is
painted on the canvass of his southern sister.

“`Of this southern sister he is rather jealous. She is too mercurial
to be altogether to his liking. He thinks she runs too
fast. He is of opinion that she is forward in her behavior — too
much so for his notions of propriety. A demure personage himself,
he dislikes her vivacity. Even the grace with which she
couples it, is only an additional danger which he eschews with
warning and frequent exhortation. His error is, perhaps, in assuming
her in excess in one way, and he only proper in the opposite
extreme.

“`As little prepared is he to approve of the demeanor of his
northern brother. Virginia is none of his favorites. He has
never been satisfied with the high head she carries, from the day
when that malicious Col. Byrd, of Westover, made fun of his
commissioners.[1] The virtue of our North-Carolinian runs somewhat
into austerity. We fear that he has suffered somehow a
cross with the Puritans. His prudence is sometimes a little too
close in its economies. His propriety may be suspected of coldness;
and a very nice analysis may find as much frigidity in his
modesty as purity and sensibility. He is unkind to nobody so
much as to himself. He puts himself too much on short commons.
[2] He does not allow for what is really generous in his
nature, and freezes up, accordingly, long before the “Yule Log”
is laid on the hearth at Christmas. His possessions constitute him,
in wealth perhaps, no less than size, one of the first class states
of the confederacy — yet he has failed always to put the proper
value on them. His mountains — of which we shall give hereafter
a series of sketches — are salubrious in a high degree —

very beautiful to the eye, and full of precious minerals and metals.
[3] But his metallurgists do precious little with the one, and
he has failed to commission a single painter to make pictures of
the other. He has some first rate lands scattered over his vast
domains — the valleys between his mountains making not only
the loveliest but the most fertile farmsteads, while along his
southern borders, on the seaboard, it is found that he can raise
as good rice as in any other region. But he is too religiously
true to tar and turpentine to develope the rare resources which
he possesses and might unfold by the adoption of only a moderate
degree of that mouvement impulse which the world on every
side of him exhibits.[4] He has tried some experiments in silk,
but it seems to have given him pain to behold the fatiguing labors
of his worms, and, averting his eyes from their sufferings,
he has forgotten to provide the fresh mulberry leaves on which
they fed. When they perished, his consolation was found in
the conviction that they were freed from their toils; with this
additional advantage over men, that their works would never
follow them. His negroes are fat and lazy, possessing, in the
former respect, greatly the advantage of their masters.

“`Our North-Carolinian will be a lean dog always — though it
would be no satisfaction to him if the chase is to be inevitable
from the leanness. His experience refutes the proverb. Certainly,
the contrast is prodigious between his negroes and himself.
They have the most unctuous look of all the slaves in the South
— and would put to utter shame and confusion their brethren of
the same hue in the Yankee provinces — the thin-visaged, lankjawed,
sunken-eyed, shirking, skulking free negroes of Connecticut
and Rhode Island. Our North Carolina negro rolls rather
than walks. His head is rather socketed between his shoulders
than upon a neck or shaft. When he talks, it is like a heated
dog lapping — his mouth is always greasy, and he whistles whenever

he has eaten. He is the emblem of a race the most sleek,
satisfied, and saucy in the world. You see the benevolence of
the master in the condition of the slave. He derives his chief
enjoyments, indeed, from the gay humors of the latter. He
seems to have been chosen by Heaven as a sort of guardian of
the negro, his chief business being to make him happy.

“`Our North-Carolinian, with all his deficiencies, is a model of
simplicity and virtue. His commendable qualities are innumerable.
He never runs into excesses. You will never see him
playing Jack Pudding at a feast. He commits no extravagances.
You will never find him working himself to death for a living.
He is as moderate in his desires as he is patient in his toils. He
seems to envy nobody. You can scarcely put him out of temper.
He contracts no debts, and is suspicious of those who do.
He pays as he goes, and never through the nose. He wastes
none of his capital, if he never increases it, and his economy is
such that he never troubles himself to furnish a reason for his
conduct, before he is asked for it. In truth he is almost too virtuous
for our time. He seems to have been designed for quite
another planet. He is totally unambitious, and though you may
congratulate yourself at getting ahead of him, you will be mortified
to learn from himself that this is altogether because he prefers
to remain behind. He has no wants now that I remember,
with a single exception. Without having a single moral feature
in common with Diogenes, he perhaps will be obliged to you if
you will not interrupt his sunshine.'”

“Well, have you done at last?” demanded the fiery little son
of the old North State, as the other appeared to pause.

“The chronicle? — yes.”

“Well, I'll just take leave to say that it's a most slanderous
and lying history from beginning to end.”

“To what do you object?”

“To everything.”

“But what is there that you deny to be true?”

“Well, there's that about our shipping. Why, instead of two
vessels, Wilmington's got fifty, more or less, and some of them
steamers, and some of them square-rigged, brigs and hermaphrodites.”

“I admit the hermaphrodites. I have seen one of them myself.”

“Ah! have you? and you'll admit the brigs and schooners
too, I reckon, if you're put to it, and the steamers. Then, too, you
don't say a word of our exports.”

“Your produce, you mean! Didn't I admit the pumpkins and
the peas?”

“As if six millions could be got out of peas and pumpkins.”

“It does seem a large amount, indeed, from such a source,
but of course there's the tar and turpentine.”

“I say, young hoss,” put in the Texan, “don't you see that
old Bile is just putting the finger of fun into the green parts of
your eye.”

“Well said, son of Texas; the figure is not a bad one. The
finger of fun! — green parts of the eye! Good — decidedly.”

“He's poking fun at me, you mean to say.”

“That's it!”

“Well, he shall see that he can't do that without risking something
by the transaction. One thing, my friend, you forgot to
say about the people of North Carolina in your chronicle. They
won't stand impudence of any sort. And now I have just to ask
of you for an answer, up and down, to one question.”

“Propound!”

“Did you mean to make my state or me, personally, ridiculous
by what you have been saying?”

“Ridiculous, indeed, my friend! How can you imagine such
a vain thing. You are quite too sensitive. Your self-esteem is
singularly undeveloped. Your state is a very great state, after
a somewhat peculiar model, and no doubt, though a small man,
you are one who need not be ashamed of yourself or your
acquaintance.”

We all assured the young Carolinian that there could be no
purpose to give him offence — that the Alabamian was simply
endeavoring to amuse the company with a salient view of men
and communities.

“But he shan't do so at my expense.

“Oh! he means nothing of the kind.'

“If he did!”

“Well!” quoth the Alabamian. “If I did! what then?”

“Why, you'd only try it at some peril.”

“Peril of what?”

“Of a fight to be sure! We'd see who was the best man
after all.”

“There is something in the warning to prompt a person to
tread cautiously. The rattle announces the snake. Now, look
you, my friend, once for all, I beg leave to disclaim all desire to
offend you. I simply sought to enjoy my jest, in an innocent
way, and to amuse other people by it. That ought to be sufficient;
but, for my own sake and self-esteem, I must add that
it is only as a good Christian that I say so much. I am apt to
be riled rather, — feel skin and hair both raised unnaturally —
when I am threatened; and, as for a fight, it sounds to me rather
like an invitation than a warning. Were you now to desire to
do battle with me how would you propose to fight?”

“Why, if I were really anxious, I shouldn't much care how.
I am good at pistol and rifle, and have left enough for a good
bout at arms-length with a bigger man than myself.”

“Well, my good fellow, for all that, you'd stand no chance
with me at either. I should whip you out of your breeches,
without unbuttoning mine.”

“You?”

“Yes, I.”

We were all now somewhat curious. The orator did not look
half the man of his opponent.

“Now,” said he, “without fighting, which wouldn't do here
of course, we can test the chances of the two. Suppose you
try and lift that little brass piece yonder,” pointing to the cannon
of the steamer, “our captain's brazen beauty.”

“I can't do it, nor you.”

“Answer for yourself. I can. But here is a test.”

With these words he seized two chairs that stood at hand.

“Hold the backs of these firmly,” he said to the bystanders.

He placed the chairs some five feet apart, and in the twinkling
of an eye had stretched himself at length, the back of his head
resting upon one chair, his heels upon the other.

“Now, some half dozen of you sit upon me.”

To the astonishment of all, the slight-looking person, who
seemed too frail to support himself, maintained two or three persons

for several seconds sitting upon his unsupported body. He
stretched out his arms to the group.

“Feel them.”

They were all muscle — so much whip, cord and wire.

“You spoke of pistol and rifle,” continued the orator. “You
shall have a sample of shooting.” He retired for a few moments,
and returned, bringing with him a large case which, when opened,
displayed a beautiful brace of pistols and a rifle of elegant proportions
and high finish. The pistols were already charged. A
bottle was thrown into the sea, and, at the flash of the pistol, was
shattered to a thousand pieces.

“My friend,” quoth the orator, “I have led just that sort of
life which makes a man up to anything; and the use of the
weapon, of every sort, is natural to me in any emergency.”

“Well, t'aint your muscle and strength and good shooting that
would keep me from having a trial with you, in case you show'd
a disposition to insult me.”

“But I avow no such disposition, my excellent friend of the
old North State.”

“Many's the man that's a good shot at a bottle, who
can't take a steady aim, with another pistol looking him in the
face.”

“Nothing more true. But we need say no more on this head,
unless you still think that I designed offence.”

“Well, since you say you didn't, of course, I'm satisfied.”

“I'm glad of it. There's my fist. I didn't mean offence to
you, my friend; but I confess to amusing myself at all hazards
and with any sort of customer. You happened in the way, and
I stumbled over you. You are a clever fellow, and I don't like
you the less for standing up for your state, which is a clever and
most respectable state, — a state of size, and some sizable steamboats
and schooners, — not forgetting the hermaphrodite. And
now, let us have a touch of snake and tiger together.”

“Where were you born?” demanded the North-Carolinian.

“I was born in a cloud and suckled by the east wind.”

“Oh, get out! I reckon you're crazy, after all.”

“I'll defend myself against the imputation when you'll prove
to me that anybody is quite sane. It is but a difference in
degree between the whole family of man.”

“What's your business? You've served, I reckon, in the
army.”

“Yes, as a ranger.”

“Been in many fights?”

“A few. The last I had was with seven Apache Indians. I
had but one revolver, a six-barrel—”

“Well?”

“I killed six of the savages.”

“And the seventh?”

“He killed me! — And now for the snake and tiger.”

The two disappeared together, steering in the direction of the
bar. When they next joined us, the North-Carolinian had his
arm thrust lovingly through that of his tormentor, and came
forward laughing uproariously, and exclaiming:—

“You should have heard him. Lord, what a fellow! He's
mad as thunder — that's certain; but he's got a mighty deal of
sense in him, in spite of all.”

“We are about opposite Smithville now,” said our captain, as
the Alabamian came up. The latter turned to the North-Carolinian,
and, with a poke in his ribs, said:—

“You thought me quizzing your state, when, in fact, I have
more reverence for its antiquities than any person I know.
This place, Smithville, for example, I have studied with great
industry. It was settled — perhaps you have heard — by the
first man of the name of Smith that came out of Noah's ark.
It is supposed, indeed, to be the very spot where the ark rested
when the waters subsided. There is an old windmill here,
still to be seen, and the most picturesque object in the place,
which is referred back to the period when Noah carried three
sheets in the wind. The people here, of course, are all named
Smith.”

“Oh, that's a mistake, my dear fellow,” put in the North-Carolinian.
“You have been imposed upon. I know the place, and
know that the Buttons live here, and the Black family; and
there's another family—”

“Never mind — it is you who are mistaken. They are really
all Smiths, however much they may disguise and deny. There's
a family likeness running through all of them which nobody
can dispute.”

“That's true. There is such a likeness, I admit.”

“Of course you must admit. Everybody sees it. The wonder
is, that, boasting such a great antiquity, they are so little
ambitious. Their enterprise is limited to an occasional visit to
the oyster-bank, where it is said they will feed for some hours
at a stretch, but they never trouble themselves to carry any of
the fruits away. The pearl-fisheries, which conjecture supposes
to have been very active here at one period, were discontinued
and fell into neglect somewhere about the time of the Babylonian
captivity. Smithville is a place that should largely command
the veneration of the spectator, apart from its antiquity of site,
and the antiquities which may yet be found within its precincts
after proper exploration; it is a study for the ethnologist. There
is one peculiarity about the race — all the children here are old
when they are born. The period of gestation seems to be about
eighteen years. The child is invariably born with a reddish
mustache and imperial, and a full stock of reddish hair.”

“Bless me, what a story! Why, how they have imposed
upon you, old fellow! I tell you, I myself know the families
of Button and Black, and — and they all have children — real
children, just like any other people's children — little, small,
helpless, with hardly any hair upon their heads, not a sign of a
moustache, and the color of the hair is whitish, rather than
reddish, when they are born.”

The assurance was solemly given by our Carolinian.

“How a man's own eyes may deceive him! My dear friend,
you never saw a child in Smithville of native origin at all.
The natives are all full grown. If you saw children there —
ordinary children — they were all from foreign parts, and grievously
out of their element, I assure you. Your supposed facts
must not be allowed to gainsay philosophy. I repeat, the region,
on this score of idiosyncrasy in the race, should attract
the ethnologists. In mere antiquities — in the proofs of ancient
art — it is also rich. I have found curiously-wrought fragments
of stone there, — sharp at the edges, somewhat triangular of
shape—”

“Nothing but Indian arrow-heads, I reckon.”

“My friend, why expose yourself? They were sacrificial
implements, no doubt. Then, curious vases, in fragments, are

to be still picked up, such as were probably employed for sacred
purposes in the temples of their gods.”

“As I live, old Bile,” said the Texan — “nothing but Injun
pots and pans for biling hominy.”

“Get thee behind us, Texas — blanket thyself and be silent.
The present inhabitants of Smithville are certainly the Autocthones
— natives of the soil. They have never known any
other. And yet, Smith is said to have been a common name
among the Phœnicians. Its founder was undoubtedly TubalCain.
It is fortunate that we have a place like Smithville, destined
for its perpetuation. We are, unhappily, fast losing all
traces of the venerable name in every other quarter of the
country.”

“Why how you talk! There isn't a name so common as
Smith in all our country.”

“Ah, my dear fellow! do you not see that you are giving
constant proof of what I said touching Smithville, that all the
babies were grown men at birth?”

“That's somehow a fling at me, I reckon; but I sha'n't quarrel
with you, now I know you.”

At this moment, the tender tinkle of the guitar, in the hands
of Selina Burroughs, announced that my friend Duyckman had
succeeded in his entreaties; and we gathered around the ladies,
and the mischievous fooling of our Alabamian ceased for a season,
— but only for a season. The young lady sang very
sweetly one of Anacreon Moore's best lyrics, accompanied by
my friend from Gotham. When she had done, to the surprise
of all, our orator, who seemed quite a universal genius, coolly
took up the guitar when the damsel laid it down, and, without
apology or preliminary of any kind, gave us the following sample
of the mock-heroic with equal archness and effect: —

THE ANCIENT SUITOR.

“Oh! most lame and impotent conclusion,” cried the lady.
“An old and stale scandal.”

“What a slander of the sex,” echoed Gotham, looking more
sentimental than ever.

“I have given you but a true and common history,” answered
the orator. “It is within every man's experience; but here's a
case that occurred in one of our own villages. The ladies there
admit the fact to be undeniable, though they assert — Credat
Judœus! — that the world can show no other such marvellous
example.”

Here he again fingered the guitar with the ease of one who
had mastered all its pulses, and sung the following historical
ballad, which he called —

LOVE'S CONTINGENT REMAINDER.

“Worse and worse!” cried the lady.

“Truer and truer,” answered the orator.

“Bless me, sir, for what reason is it that you so hate our sex?”

“Hate your sex! Nobody loves it better. I have been
married three times!”

“That accounts for it all!” quoth Gotham, sotto voce, with
the feeling of one who is amply avenged. Selina Burroughs
whispered —

“The danger seems to be that he will leave just such an inscription
upon his monument as the Hon. Mr. Custis of the Eastern
Shore.”

There was a pause.

“No story to-night?” inquired one of the party.

“By the way, yes — and our friend here from North Carolina,
has been appointed to deliver it.”

With a thousand excuses and apologies, some stammering and
much confusion, our fiery little companion commenced his task,
in a legend of the North Carolina shore, which he entitled

THE SHIP OF FIRE.

“The State of North Carolina, the assumed poverty of which in
material resources, and in mind, has been a little too much dwelt
upon by some portions of this company, is, nevertheless, quite
as rich, in all respects, as any of her sister states. Her deficiency
seems to lie in her want of a seaport of capacity equal to her
product, and in the lack of a population sufficiently dense for her
territorial magnitude. We may never be able to supply the
one deficiency, except possibly by railroads which shall give us
the free use of the harbors of our sister states; but the latter
will be developed on a magnificent scale, so soon as the population
shall become sufficiently dense for the due exploration and
working of our soil. Our productions, as the case stands, must
now amount to fully eight millions, sent to market along
shore. And this, be it remembered, is pretty much a surplus
production. As an agricultural community, North Carolina
supports herself apart from what she sells. Of the morals of the
people of our State, I have only to say, that they shrink from
comparison with none. We do no startling things, but we rob
no exchequers. We attempt no wonderful works, but we repudiate
none of our debts. In brief, we owe no debts. There is no
State in the Union quite so independent as North Carolina. You
may smile at her simplicity, but you must respect her honesty.
You may see something green in her eye, but nothing jaundiced.
If goaded by no wild ambition, she is troubled with no excess
of bile. Her brains may never set rivers on fire, but they are
sure not to blow up her locomotive.

“But, even in enterprises, such as are so largely assumed to be

the signs of moral progress, she is not idle. In proportion to
the strength of her population, her railroads are as extensive
as those of any other Southern State; and when you consider
the wide stretch of her territory and the difficulties of her situation,
lacking an eligible seaport, she has done more and better
than most. Her people are prosperous, making money fast; the
results of tar and turpentine will put to shame those of your
boasted regions of rice and cotton; and our railroads have
brought into use, for these productions, vast territories which have
hitherto yielded nothing. I repeat, that in the morals of her people,
their physical prosperity, their virtues and advance in education,
North Carolina need shrink in comparison with none of
the states of this confederacy.”

“Bravo! — spoken like a patriot! But what of the story all
this time?”

“Patiently: I had first to fling off some of the feeling with
which you, sir, have been stirring me up about my good old
State for the last twenty-four hours.”

“Well — you have relieved yourself?”

“Perhaps: but a few words more, before I begin my legend.
I shall not say anything here about our lack of literature in
North Carolina, since the argument necessarily belongs to most
of the Southern States — in fact, to all the States — our national
deficiency being still a reproach to us in the mouths of other nations.
When the nation, as a whole, shall be able to answer this
reproach satisfactorily, it will then be quite time enough for
North Carolina to show her solicitude as to what people think
of her shortcomings.”

“Quite logical that.”

“I have no doubt that the native genius of the old North
State will bring her intellectual wares into the market in due
season for her reputation.”

“Save her distance, you mean.”

“As you please. Her native material affords adequate stuff
for the future author and artist. She is rich in traditions and
unwritten histories. Her revolutionary chronicles are by no
means meagre, and only lack the chronicler and author. They
will be found as soon as our communities shall become sufficiently
dense and numerous to afford the audience.”

“Meanwhile, we will put off the requisition ad Grœcas Kalendas.
The argument is a good plea for all the states if admissible
in the case of one. I doubt its propriety. I am not
prepared to believe in that inspiration which waits upon the
gathering of the audience. But the point needs no discussion.
Go ahead with your story.”

“My story must excite no expectations. I am no artist, and
shall attempt nothing but a simple sketch — a bare outline of a
legend which our simple people along the seashore, wreckers
and fishermen, have told a thousand times with grave looks and
a most implicit faith. It will add but another chapter to the
vast chronicles of credulity which we possess, and skepticism
will decide against it only as further proof of human superstitions
which keep their ground even in the most enlightened
ages. Be it so. The wise man will find much occasion for
thought even where the subject is a vulgar superstition. The
inventive genius may go further, and weave from it some of
those beautiful fictions which need no better staple than the
stuff which dreams are made of — which delight us in the fancies
of Comus, and carry us into new creations, and new realms of
exploration in the Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream.”

Thus far the preliminaries. Our raconteur then proceeded
as follows: —

“You are then to know that annually, at a regularly-recurring
period, the coast of North Carolina, even the very route
over which we voyage now, is visited by a luminous object having
the exact appearance, at a little distance, of a ship on fire.
This appearance has been seen regularly, according to the tradition,
and the fact has been certified by the sworn statements
in recent times, of very credible witnesses. They affirm
that nothing can be more distinct than the appearance of this
ship, limned in fire, consuming, yet always unconsumed. She
invariably appears approaching from the east. She speeds
slowly toward the west, nearing the shores always until seemingly
about to run aground, when she disappears, for a moment,
only to re-emerge again from the distant east. Thus advancing
perpetually, she appears to grow in bulk to grow more vivid
and distinct as she draws nigh, until, when most perfect to the
eye, and about to enter the harbor — when she flits from sight,

only to shoot up in the distance and renew her fiery progress to
the shore.

“Every part of her seems ablaze. Hull and gunwale, mast
and spar, sail and cordage, are all distinctly defined in fiery mass
and outline. Yet she does not seem to burn. No fiery flakes
ascend, no smoke darkens her figure, no shroud or sail falls, no
visible change takes place in her fate, or dimensions — and thus
perfect, she glides onward to the shore, glides along the shore,
skirts the breakers into which she appears about to penetrate,
then suddenly goes out; but only, as I have said, to loom up
once more upon the eastern edge of the sea. This operation
continues for twenty-four hours, one day in every year.”

“Bless me, how curious. I wish we could get an exhibition of
it now. It is a regular day in the year on which it appears?”

“So it is asserted, but I do not recollect the day, and I doubt
if our chronicles determine the fact. But the affidavits of respectable
witnesses give the date on which they declare themselves
to have seen the spectacle, and that day, each year, may
be assumed to be the one on which it annually reappears.”

“Well, how do they account for this singular exhibition?”

“In the following manner. The tradition, I may add, is a
very old one, and the historical facts, so far as they may, are
found to confirm it.

“The burning vessel is known as `The ship of the Palatines.'
The story is that, some time during the region of the First
George of England, and when it was the anxious policy of that
monarch to encourage emigration to the Southern Colonies, a
small company of that class of colonists who were known as
`German Palatines' having come from the Palatinate, arrived
in London seeking means to get to America. They were sustained
for a time at the public expense, until a vessel could be
chartered for their use, when they took their departure for the
New World. The public policy made it comparatively easy to
persuade the crown to this sort of liberality; and succor of this
character was frequently accorded to this class of adventurers,
who were supposed to have a special claim on the bounty of the
German monarch of the English. The emigrants, in the present
instance, wore the appearance of poverty so common to their
class, and studiously forebore to betray the fact that they had

any resources of their own. But, as usual, in all such cases,
they were far less destitute than they avowed themselves. Our
Palatines, on this occasion, were in rather better condition, in
pecuniary respects, than was commonly the fact with their countrymen.
It was only a natural cunning which prompted their
concealment of means which they preferred to keep in reserve
for other uses. Upon their secresy, on this head, depended their
hope of help from private bounty and the public exchequer. They
kept their secret successfully while on shore. It was their great
error and misfortune that they were less prudent when they put
to sea. They had treasures — speaking with due heed to the
usual standards of inferior castes — of considerable value; treasures
of gold and silver, jewels and movables; old family acumulations,
little relics of a former prosperity: relics of an affection
which sometimes stinted itself in its daily desires, that it might
provide token and trinket to give pleasure to a beloved one.
The stock, in these things, which had been parsimoniously kept,
and cunningly hidden away by this little community of adventurers,
was by no means inconsiderable. A treasure of great
value in their own eyes, it was a sufficient bait to lust and cupidity,
when beheld by those of others. But I must not anticipate.
These treasures of the precious metals, toys, and trinkets, were
easily concealed in close nooks, among their common luggage,
and, seeming no other than a poor peasantry, and mere destitutes
of society, they went on board of the vessel which had been
chartered for them, and soon after put out to sea.

“The voyage was a very tedious one, protracted by bad
weather, and thwarting winds. The bark in which they sailed
was one which would be likely, in our day, to be condemned as
unseaworthy, except when soldiers, doing battle for the country,
needed to be sent to Texas and California. It would answer
even now for such purposes — perhaps find preference.”

“A good hit, young Turpentine,” quoth the Alabamian.

“Our Palatines were pretty well wornout by the tedium of
the voyage, their miserable fare and more miserable accommodations.
The ship was leaky, the stores stale, the storms frequent,
and, our poor adventurers, new to such a progress, were terribly
subdued in spirit long before they made soundings. When
at length they did, when at length the low gray coast of North

Carolina, stretched its slight barriers across their western horizon,
and the cry of `land' sounded in their ears, they rose from the
deeps of despondency into an extremity of joy. They were in
ecstasies of hope, and, in their madness of heart, they forgot that
prudence which had hitherto kept them humble and cautious.
Seeing the shores so nigh, growing momently nearer, the great
trees, the verdant shrubs, the quiet nooks and sheltering places
for which their fancies had so long yearned, they felt that all
danger, all doubt and delay was at an end, and all reserve and
secretiveness were forgotten. They prepared to leave their
gloomy prison-ship, and to taste the virgin freedom of the shores.
Each began to gather up his stores, and to separate his little
stock of worldly goods, from the common mass. They gathered
their bales and boxes from below. They strapped and unstrapped
them; and grouped themselves upon the decks, waiting
to see the anchor dropped, and to dart into the boats which were
to carry them ashore.

“Thus men for ever cheat themselves with their hopes, and
the impatience of a single moment, will undo the work of years.

“They were destined to disappointment. To their surprise,
the ship was suddenly hauled off from land. The sails were
backed. The shores receded from sight. They could not land
that day. The captain had his reasons. They were in dangerous
soundings. There were treacherous currents. The insidious
rocks were about to work them disaster. It was necessary
that they should seek a more accessible region in which to effect
their progress to the desired haven. These were the grounds
for the movement which baffled their anticipations at the moment
of seeming certainty.

“The last feather, it is said, breaks the camel's back. It is
the last drop of bitter poured in the cup already full of bitterness.
I can not say that our poor Palatines were utterly broken
down by their disappointments; but it is very sure that they
felt as wretched that night, as they receded from the land so
freshly won, as if they were required to begin their voyage
anew. Of course, the pretexts of the master were wholly false.
He had made his port. He had reached his true destination.
Had run his proper course, and might have landed all his Palatines
that very night. That he did not, was due to their own

error of policy — to that wild eagerness and childish hope, which
made them heedless of a caution which they had hitherto preserved
with a religious strictness, through long years in which
they had known nothing but the caprice of fortune.

“The careless, or the ostentatious exhibition of their hitherto
concealed treasures, now held to be secure, was the true cause
of the master's change of policy. His greedy eye had caught
golden glimpses among their luggage. He had seen the silver
vessels and the shining jewels — he had detected the value of
those heirlooms which had been accumulated and preserved by
the tribe of adventurers, in spite of the trials of poverty, through
long generations.

“These discoveries awakened the devil in his heart. His
was the sort of honesty which kept steadfast only in the absence
of the temper. He had, otherwise, few or no human motives
for its exercise. His life had been a reckless and a restless one,
and sober business performance was only to be pursued by way
of variety, and in the absence of more exciting stimulants. His
mate, or second officer, was a person after his own heart. To
him he dropped a hint of his discoveries. A word to the rogue
is quite as sufficient as to the wise man. It required but few
words between the two to come to a mutual understanding. The
seamen were severally sounded; and the ship clawed off from
the shore.

“In those days the profession of piracy had no such odious
character as it bears in ours. Successful piracy was, in short,
rather a creditable business. It was not dishonorable, and he
who practised it with most profit, was likely to acquire from it
the best credit. Great pirates were knighted by great kings in
those periods. Witness the case of the monster Henry Morgan.
The bloody hand was rather a noble badge indeed, provided it
was shown at court full-handed. Then, as now, it was only your
poor rogue who was hung for making too free with his neighbor's
goods. Piracy was legitimated beyond the line, and found
its national and natural excuse in Great Britain when it could
prove that the victims were only Spaniards or Frenchmen. Like
any other speculation, its moral depended wholly on its results.
We are not to feel surprised, therefore, at the easy virtue of our
mariners — a people, in those days, whose lives and morals occasioned

no such respectful concern or consideration among the
pious as they command in ours.

“The devil, accordingly, found nothing to obstruct his machinations
in the hearts of our captain and his subordinates. They
determined upon possessing the goods and chattels of the poor
emigrants, about whose fate the government was hardly likely
to inquire. Hence the sudden purpose of drawing off from the
shore, at the very moment of landing, to the mortification and
final defeat of the hopes of our simple and unsuspecting Palatines.

“It was not found difficult to convince these ignorant people,
that the safety of the vessel required these precautions — that
they had erred somewhat in their reckoning — that they were
still short of their promised port, and that a progress farther
west was necessary. No matter what the plea, it was sufficient
to silence complaint or murmuring. They were at the mercy
of the master, whether he were pirate or honest mariner, and resigned
themselves, with what philosophy they might, to the decree
that told them of rolling a few days longer on the deep.

“They did not linger on deck after night, and when the shores
were no longer visible. The hope deferred which maketh the
heart sick, drove the greater part of them to their hammocks.
Their baggage, with the unhappily exposed wealth, was again
restored to the interior of the ship. But a few of the young men
sat upon the deck, watching the faint lines of the land, until
swallowed up in darkness; even then, with eyes straining in the
direction of the shore for which they yearned, conversing together,
in their own language, in hope and confident expectation
of their future fortunes.

“While thus employed, the captain and his crew, in another
part of the vessel, were concocting their fearful scheme of villany.

“The hour grew late, the night deepened; the few Germans
who remained on deck, stretched themselves out where they
were, and were soon composed in slumber.

“While thus they lay under the peaceful cope and canopy of
heaven, in a slumber, which the solemn starlight, looking down
upon, seemed to hallow, the merciless murderers, with cautious footstep
and bared weapon, set upon them. The cabin-door of the

vessel had been fastened, the entrance closed to the hold. Each
seaman stood by his victim, and at a given signal they all struck
together. There was no chance given for struggle — the murderers
had planned their crime with terrible deliberation and
consummate skill. A spasmodic throe of some muscular frame
— a faint cry — a slight groan may have escaped the victims —
but little more. At least, the poor sleepers below were unaroused
by the event.

“The deck cleared of the murdered men, the murderers descended
stealthily to the work below. Passing from berth to
berth with the most fiendish coolness, they struck — seldom
twice — always fatally — men, women, and children; the old,
the young, the tender and the strong, the young mother and
the poor angel-innocent but lately sent to earth — all perished;
not permitted to struggle, or submitting in despair, incapable of
arresting the objects of the criminals. We may fancy for ourselves
the horror of such a scene. We may imagine some one
or more of the victims awaking under the ill-directed knife —
awaking to a vain struggle — unkindly alarming those into consciousness
who had no strength for conflict. Perhaps a mother
may have found strength to rise to her knees, imploring mercy
for the dear child of her heart and hope; — may have been suffered
to live sufficiently long to see its death struggle, its wild
contortions, in the grasp of the unrelenting assassin. Art may
not describe such a scene truly, as imagination can hardly conceive
it. They perished, one and all — that little family of emigrants;
and the murderers, grouped around the treasures which
had damned their hearts into the worst hell of covetousness and
crime, were now busied in the division of their bloody spoils.

“How they settled this matter among themselves — what division
they made of the treasure — and with what temper they
decided upon their future course, must be wholly matter of conjecture.
Tradition rarely deals with the minor details of her
subject, though sufficiently courageous always in the conception
of leading events.

“The story further goes, that, having done the fearful deed
without botching, thoroughly, effectively, suffering neither resistance
nor loss — having possessed themselves of all that was
valuable in the ship, as well as among the stores of their victims

— the pirates proceeded to set the vessel on fire, as the
safe mode for concealing all the proofs of their crime. They
launched their boats. It was midnight. The night was calm
and very beautiful — the stars looking down with serene eyes,
as innocently and unconsciously, as if there were no guilt, and
shame, and murder, anywhere visible; as if Death had not yet
been born anywhere among the sons of men. No voices in the
winds, no wail along the sea, arose to startle the secret consciences
of the bloody-handed wretches, fresh from their cruel
sacrifice. They worked as if Law and Love both presided
gratefully over their labors; and, with jest and laughter, and
perhaps song, they cheerily toiled away, until their ill-gotten
spoils were all safely transferred to the stowage of the boats.
They then set the condemned vessel on fire —
and plied their prows in the direction of that shore, from the
opening harbor of which they had withheld their longing victims.
The fire, fed by tar and other combustible matter, seized
instantly on every portion of the fabric. The pirates had made
their arrangements for its destruction, in such a way as to leave
no sort of doubt that the ship would be utterly destroyed. She
was herself sufficiently old and combustible. The flames rose
triumphantly in air, licking aloft with great, red, rolling tongues,
far above the maintop, darting out to the prow, climbing along
spar and shaft, from stem to stern, from keel to bulwark, involving
the whole mass in inextinguishable fire. The pirates looked
with satisfied eyes upon their work. Not the deluge now should
arrest the conflagration. The deep should engulf its embers!

“Vain hope! The Providence still sees, though the stars
prove erring watchers. Suddenly, as the receding criminals
looked back, the ship had ceased to blaze! The masts, and
spars, and sails, and cordage, still all alight, bright in fiery
beauty, perfect in every lineament, no longer raged with the
fire. The flames hissed and spread no longer. The fiery
tongues no longer ascended like hissing serpents commissioned
to destroy. They seemed each to sleep, long lines of red-hot
glow, streaks of fire, shrouds of fire, sails of fire, hull and masts

of fire, — fire alight — of a fierce red flame like that of an August
sunset — but fire that would not consume the thing of which it
seemed to have become the essential life!

“What a wonder! what a spectacle! To the murderers, the
finger of God was present. He was present, beholding all, and
his judgment of fire was already begun.

“For a moment every arm was paralyzed. The boats drifted
idly on the waters. The oars dipped and dragged through
the seas, undirected by the stroke, until the husky but harsh
voice of the captain startled them into consciousness. He was
a hardened sinner, but he too felt the terror. He was simply
the first to recover from his paralysis.

“`Hell yawns! It is hell we see! Pull for dear life, men —
pull for shore.'

“And they obeyed; and, fast as they fled, stoutly as they
pulled for land, they looked back with horror and consternation
at the sight — that terrible spectacle behind them — a ship all
fire that would not burn — a fire that would neither destroy its
object, nor perish itself, nor give out concealing smokes, shrouding
the form with blackness, — shrouding the dreadful secret which
they themselves had lighted up for the inspection of Heaven.
Was God, in truth, presiding over that bloody deck? Was he
then penetrating the secrets of that murderous hold? Did hell
really yawn upon them with its sulphurous fires! Strange,
indeed, and most terrific spectacle!

“They reached the land before the dawn of day. They
drew their boats on shore upon a lonely waste, a few miles only
from human habitations, but in a region utterly wild and savage.
They had strength only to reach the land and draw the boats
on shore in safety. Then they sank down, incapable of further
effort, and gazed with vacant eyes upon the illuminated beacon
of their hellish deeds. There was a God — there was a hell!
They read both truths, for the first time clearly, in that awful
picture of judgment.

“All night thus did the ship continue to glow with unconsuming
brightness. The mortal fires had been extinguished in the supernatural.
And thus articulately limned in phosphoric brightness,
the fatal ship sped to and fro, now passing forward to the shore
upon which they crouched — now suddenly lost to sight, and

reappearing in the east only to resume the same fast fearful
progress toward the shore. At moments when they lost her,
they breathed freely in a relieving sigh, and cried out: —

“`She's gone — sunk at last — gone now — gone for ever!'

“A moment after, they would cry out in horror: —

“`Hell! There she is again!'

“And so the night passed.

“With the dawning of the day the vessel had ceased to burn.
She was no longer illuminate. But she was there still — erect
as ever — perfect in hull, and masts, and spars, and sails, and
cordage — all unconsumed — everything in its place, as if she
were just leaving port, — but everything blackened — charred
to supernatural blackness — terribly sable — gloomy as death —
solemn, silent, portentous, moving to and fro in a never-ceasing
progress from east to west.

“With fascinated eyes the miserable murderers watched the
dreadful spectacle all day. They ate nothing. They drank
nothing. They had no sense but in their eyes, and these had
but the one object. Every moment they watched to see the
ship go down. When they spoke, it was with this hope; and
sometimes, when for a moment the spectre vessel receded in
the east, they cried this hope aloud in gasping accents full of a
horrid joy. But the joy changed in a moment — as she reappeared
quite near again — to a despair more horrid.

“With the return of night the terrible fascination increased.
The sun went down in beauty; the stars came out in serene
sweetness; the sky was without a cloud, the sea without a murmur;
the winds slept upon the waves; the trees along shore
hung motionless; and all gradually melted mistily into the sober
darkness — all but the blackened vessel. Suddenly, she
brightened. Suddenly, they beheld the snaky fires running up
the cordage. They wound about the masts; they stretched
themselves over the canvass; they glared out upon the broad
black sea with a thousand eyes of fire; and the ship again went
to and fro, from east to west, illuminate in supernatural fire.
She bore down upon them thus, and stood off, then wore, then
pressed with all canvass toward the beach upon which they
crouched, until mortal weakness could no longer endure the
terror. The dreadful horror could no more be borne. The

murderers fled from the shore — fled to the cover of the forest,
and buried themselves in the vast interior.

“According to tradition, the penalty of blood has never been
fully paid; and the rule of retributive justice requires that the
avenging fates and furies shall hang about the lives of the criminals
and their children, unless expiated by superior virtues in
the progeny, and through the atoning mercies of the Savior.
Hence the continued reappearance, year after year, of the Ship
of Fire. The immediate criminals seem to have gone free.
At all events, tradition tells us nothing of their peculiar pains
and penalties. Doubtlessly, Eternal justice followed on their
footsteps. Their lives were haunted by terror and remorse.
Horrid aspects crowded upon their souls in dreaming hours and
in solitude. They lived on their ill-gotten spoils to little profit;
and, according to the story, each year brought them down, as
by a fearful necessity, to the seashore, at the very period when
the spectre ship made her fiery progress along the coast. This
spectacle, which they were doomed to endure, kept alive and
for ever green in their souls the terrible memory of their crime.
They have all met the common destiny of earth — are all dead;
for the period of their evil deed extends back long beyond the
usual limit of human life. Their descendants still enjoy the
fruits of their crime, and hence the still-recurring spectacle of the
Ship of Fire, which, according to the tradition, must continue to
reappear, on the spot consecrated by the crime, until the last descendant
of that bloody crew shall have expiated, by a death of
shame and agony, the bloody offences of his miserable ancestor.”

Our North-Carolinian paused.

“Have you ever seen this Ship of Fire?” was the question
of one of the ladies.

“I have seen something like it — something so utterly unaccountable
otherwise, under the circumstances, that I have been
reluctantly compelled to account for the mystery by a reference
to the tradition.”

This was said somewhat hesitatingly. The Alabamian touched
the narrator on the shoulder: —

“I do not censure your credulity, my dear young Turpentine,
nor will I question your belief in any way; but suffer me to counsel,
that, whatever you may believe, you never permit yourself to
give a certificate of the fact. No affidavies, if you are wise.”