marked down upon the first map that ominous name—Promontorium Tremendum—Cape Fear. And in spite of all improvements in navigation they have remained a menace and a terror. Hatteras and Cape Lookout and Cape Fear warned off commerce and settlement.
The eloquent words of the late Mr. George Davis, of Wilmington, applied to Cape Fear, are descriptive of the general character of the North Carolina coast:
"Looking then to the Cape for the idea and reason
of its name, we find that it is the southernmost point of
Smith's Island, a naked, bleak elbow of sand jutting far
out into the ocean. Immmediately in its front are the
Frying Pan Shoals, pushing out still farther, twenty
miles to sea. Together they stand for warning and for
woe; and together they catch the long majestic roll of
the Atlantic as it sweeps through a thousand miles of
grandeur and power from the Arctic towards the Gulf.
It is the play-ground of billows and of tempests, the
kingdom of silence and awe, disturbed by no sound but
the sea-gull's shriek and the breakers' roar. Its whole
aspect is suggestive, not of repose and beauty, but of
desolation and terror. Imagination cannot adorn it.
Romance cannot hallow it. Local pride cannot soften
it. There it stands to-day, bleak and threatening and
pitiless, as it stood three hundred years ago, when Grenville
and White came near unto death upon its sands.
