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I could point out numberless memorials of Raleigh in North Carolina which could not possibly have been imported from Jamestown. The apologist of Mr. Irving might as well have said that old Ply- mouth obtained its pilgrim memorials second-hand from Virginia ; or that the ruins of the Raleigh co- lony, now visible and tangible on Roanoke Island, were like the "peculiarities characteristic," &c. of Mr. Irving, transmigrated through the souls of the Scotch king and a batch of his flatterers, via the city of Jamestown to North Carolina.
When Sir Walter, on the 7th of March, 1589, as- signed his interest in the discoveries made under his letters patent, he styled himself " chief governor of
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Assamacomoe-alias Wingandaceo-alias Virginia;" and as these Indian names embraced but a small portion even of North Carolina, it appears that he did not consider Virginia so comprehensive an ap- pellation as it afterwards came to be, and that it did not then include the present state of that name.
It is a great mistake to suppose that because Bar- tholomew Gosnold saw fit to call nearly the whole of North America Virginia in the year 1602, that ergo Sir Walter had done so in 1594; for we find that Sir Richard Grenville, in his first voyage to Roanoke in 1585, calls the country between Cape Fear and Cape Lookout, Florida ; and so, after all, if Virginia did extend to " Uncle Timmy" to the north, it did not go any further south than about the site of the present town of Beaufort, not more than one hundred miles from the island. If Pacificator will look into Smith's History of Virginia too, he will see Roanoke and the adjacent islands laid off on a map under the name of "Old Virginia." So that it appears that even Smith did not consider himself in the proper place. The truth is, the name of Virginia was extended from Roanoke (by voyages subsequent to the Raleigh colony,) first to the north, and after- wards the southern coast much further south than Cape Fear, received the name. I cannot refrain from commending to the studious perusal of Pacificator, a work which he seems never to have read, viz. Smith's History of Virginia. In this very old and interesting account of Virginia he would learn one important fact, viz. that the first expedition which sailed for
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James's River, and which settled Jamestown, was not commanded by Captain John Smith as he seems to think.
" But," says Pacificator, "North Carolina in 1650 was settled by emigrants principally from the State of Virginia." Be it so. They were very wise Vir- ginians to come over to a land more genial in its climate, more various in its resources, and more illus- trious in its historic associations. They were won over perhaps by the very fact that it was " the Vir- ginia" of Raleigh, and, as such, different in all its pe- culiarities from "the Virginia" of a man by the name of John Smith. They had heard that Grenville, Cavendish, Drake, Hariot, and Lane, all men of the age of Elizabeth, had been but the agents of Raleigh in consecrating it to the genius of English freedom ; and seeing around them every day those dangerous violations of the liberty of the subject which had de- scended to the government of Jamestown, in the shape perhaps of a "peculiarity characteristic " of the Scotch King, they came to the solitudes of North Carolina, where, at least, the freedom of opinion was safe. When Pacificator shall convict any North Carolina memorial of Raleigh of being imported from Virginia, Mr. Jo. Seawell Jones, of Shocco, re- commends him to hang it up in his own cabinet of " sounding brass and tinkling cymbals;" as North Carolina has had enoughof Virginian influences, since the days of Thomas Jefferson, without going back to the days of the cowardly monarch under whose au- spices she was first settled.
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CHAP. V.
EXTRACT FROM THE "PICTURESQUE HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA."
ROANOKE ISLAND .*
" Such is the aspect of this shore, 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more ; So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, We start, for soul is wanting there."
GIOUR.
I HAVE never wandered over the Island of Roanoke without a feeling of melancholy, as intense as that ' of Byron whilst contemplating the fallen greatness of Greece. The days of her glory are over, and gone with those beyond the flood; but still she is to me an island of the heart, for her shores are the graves of the warlike and the wise. The native In- dian built his Machicomack on her hills; and there, too, stood the city of Raleigh, the birth-place of the Anglo-American ; and thus was Roanoke known, long before the beach of Jamestown was settled or the rock of Plymouth consecrated. She is the clas- sic land of all English America, and will live in the future story of our Republic as the mother-earth of
* The above extract from the " Picturesque History of North Carolina " applies so strictly to the subject of this book, that it is here inserted as an additional chapter.
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American liberty. The illustrious names of Raleigh, of Cavendish, of Grenville, and of Drake-the he- roes of the reign of Elizabeth-are a part and por- tion of her history. Hariot, the mathematician and philosopher of the age, for the space of a whole year studied its natural resources and Indian history ; and nearly two hundred and fifty years since, gave to the world a book unequalled for the accuracy and the interest of its details. It would seem, indeed, as if the chivalry and learning of that age had contributed this splendid representation, to give a dazzling bril- liancy to the early history of that State on whose shores the flag of England was first unfurled, and in whose vallies, and over whose hills, the mountain Goddess Liberty first shouted the cry of American Independence. Bear witness, Mecklenburg, on the 20th of May, 1775.
But it is not historic association alone which makes sacred the shores and vine-clad forests of Roanoke. Nature seems to have exerted herself to adorn it as the Eden of the new world. The rich- est garniture of flowers, and the sweetest minstrelsy of birds, are there. In traversing the Northern sec- tion of the island, in the spring time of the year, flowers and sweet-scented herbs, in the wildest luxu- riance, are strewn along your winding way, wel- coming you with their fragrance to their cherished isle. The wild rose-bush, which at times springs up into nurseries of one hundred yards in extent, " blooms blushing " to the song of the thousand birds that are basking in her bowers. The mocking-bird,
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too, whatever ornithologists may say of its " chimney habits," makes this his favorite haunt ; and I have myself seen him pillowed on the highest cluster of roses, and swinging with his weight the slender tree, as he warbled out his most exquisite song. It may be, however, that Roanoke is the very spot, where, in imitation of the Eastern queen of song, the mock- ing-bird fell in love with the rose.
There are stately pine forests extending along the centre of the island; but the most beautiful of its trees are what are commonly called dogwood, the laurel, and a delicate species of the white oak. I have seen a forest composed of these trees, the branches and limbs of which were literally inter- twisted and knitted together by the embraces of the Roanoke vine, which here, in its native garden, grows with extraordinary exuberance.
Within the deep shades of these reclining vintages, the spirit of solitude at times reigns in undisturbed majesty. At mid-day, when the heat of the summer's sun is too glowing for exertion, there is not the chirp of a bird to break the solemnity of the spot. The long and slender vine snake, which at other hours is seen industriously threading his way through the mazes of the vintage, has now suspended himself on a twig, and hangs as idle and as still as a black silk chord. If you hear the tread of footsteps, it is not of man, but the stealthy retreat of an unsuspecting fawn, which hath slept too long, and which now, like a woodland nymph, hies away on the approach of man. But in the morning and in the evening this
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scene of quiet and of repose is all changed. It is then the granary of the island, and the birds have all assembled and are warbling in bacchanal confusion their morning or evening hymn. The scenery of Roanoke is neither grand nor sublime. There are no Alpine summits to mingle with clouds, but a series of gentle undulations, and a few abrupt hills, in the valleys of which the richly-dressed scenery I have described may be found. If it should ever be the lot of the reader to stroll under the vintage shades of Roanoke-made impervious to the rays of the sun by the rich foliage and clustering grapes above him-he will not venture to discredit the highly- wrought sketches of Hariot, nor mock the humbler enthusiasm of the volume now before him. I re- member once to have stood upon the loftiest eminence of the island, and to have watched the progress of a sunset. It was on a summer's eve, which had been made peculiarly clear by a violent thunder squall the preceding night, and not a film of a cloud or a vapor was to be seen about the horizon or in the blue vault of heaven. There was not a breath of air to stir the slender leaf of the few lofty pines that straggled around me, and even the mocking-bird seemed to have hushed his capricious song, to enjoy the intense feeling of the moment. To the westward of the island, the waters of the Albemarle crept sluggishly along; and in the winding current of the Swash se- veral vessels stood, with out-spread but motionless wings. Away down to the South, the Pamlico spread itself out, like an ocean of molten gold, gleaming
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along the banks of Chickamacomico and Hatteras ; and, contrasted with this, were the dark waters which separate Roanoke from the sea-beach, and which were now shaded from the tints of the sunset by the whole extent of the island.
A sea of glory streamed along the narrow ridge -dividing the inland waters from the ocean; and beyond this the boundless Atlantic heaved her chafed bosom of sapphire and of gold against the base of yon stormy Cape. I enjoyed and lived in that sunset and twilight hour. I thought of the glorious destiny of the land on which I trod-as glorious as the waters and the earth then around me. I thought of the genius and the death of Raleigh-of the heroic devotedness of Grenville-of the gallantry of Ca- vendish and Drake-of the learning of Hariot-of the nobleness of Manteo, the Lord of Roanoke-of the adventurous expedition of Sir Ralph Lane up the river Moratock-of the savage array of the blood- thirsty Wingina-of the melancholy fate of the last of the Raleigh colonies-of Virginia Dare, the first Anglo-American-of the agony of her mother-and I then thought of those exquisite lines of Byron,
" Shrine of the mighty, can it be That this is all remains of thee ?"
On the ruins of the ancient city of Raleigh " the indolent wrecker now sits and smokes the pipe of oblivion-a very wretch"-ignorant of the glorious associations of the land of his birth. He can tell you nothing of the deeds of those whose early efforts
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in the settlement of Roanoke gave an impulse to the English colonization in America, and thus laid the foundations of our great American Republic. He will speak vaguely of the name of Sir Walter Raleigh, and will regale you with legends and stories of pirates and wrecks, which it is the busi- ness of the novelist, and not the historian, to record. Such of them as I could link with the Raleigh colo- nies, I have engrafted upon more authentic materials, and perhaps the traditionary history of no country is equal in interest to that of Roanoke Island. The legend of Sir Walter Raleigh's ship, of the great bat- tle of Hatteras, and the nativity of Virginia Dare, which I have perhaps too painfully detailed, are the best assurances that the names of those who first planted the flag of old mother England on our shores cannot die.
The Island of Roanoke is at present tenanted by a class of people as rude and as boisterous as their native seas. They are a race of adventurous pilots and hardy mariners, and in their light craft seek the remotest islands of the West Indies ; and occasionally with their freights of naval stores, penetrate into the Mediterranean, to the ports of Gibraltar and Malaga.
A race of rugged Mariners are these, Unpolished men, and boisterous as their seas. The native Islanders alone their care, And hateful he who breathes a foreign air. These did the Ruler of the deep ordain To build proud navies, and command the main ; On canvass wings to cut their watery way, No bird so fleet, no thought so swift as they.
ODYSSEY.
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Am I then too enthusiastic in the history of Roanoke Island ? It is the birth-place of Virginia Dare-it was the home of the faithful and noble Lord of Roanoke; and every hill, and every vale, is marked in its history by scenes of joy and woe. The battle fields of the warlike Wingina are there ; and there the imagination may stretch itself back- wards over the course of time, and dwell upon the Indian legends of wars that had passed, when the assembled host of barbarians fought upon the beach that they might be cheered on by the music of the waves. I have dreamed away many a sunny day in the solitude of its woods, and while reveling in my fancy upon the present magnificence of our Re- public, I have not forgotten that I stood within that paradise of the new world in which Providence had decreed the nativity of the first-born of a great and mighty people.
" While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand ;" while the great events of her annals are not forgotten, the dignity of the history of North Carolina shall stand-alike unsullied by the self-abasement of her own sons, or the fiendish falsehoods of the Infidel of Monticello.
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CHAP. VI.
MISS FLORA MACDONALD.
THE romantic story of this celebrated heroine is not confined to Scotland, nor to the fortunes of the house of Stuart. The banks of the Cape Fear, in North Carolina, were for several years distinguished by her residence ; and it is this circumstance which will link her name with the history of that state, al- most as inseparably as it already is with that of her own Scotland.
The rebellions of Scotland had contributed to the population of the Cape Fear counties long before the famous revolt of the Highland clans, under the chival- rous banner of Prince Charles Edward in 1745, after which much of the nobility and gentry of the Stuart party sought a refuge amidst the solitudes of our forests. The fatal battle of Culloden annihilat- ed the power and independence of the Highland " lairds ;" and in the year 1747 a colony of five thousand Highlanders arrived, and settled on the banks of the Cape Fear. They came originally from hard necessity, but, even up to this time, from ties of relationship, or the still deeper sympathy of mutual origin, the Highland emigrants are prone to seek the sandy region of their countrymen. He who cannot go to Scotland may penetrate into the coun-
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ties of Cumberland, Moore, Richmond, Robeson, and indeed into nearly all the Cape Fear counties, where he will find even the Gaelic tongue, in all its native purity.
Flora MacDonald was the daughter of MacDonald of Milton, in the island of South Uist ; but her father having died during her infancy, and her mother having married MacDonald of Armadale, in Skye, an adherent of the government, she was thus endeared to both parties,-the government and that of Prince Charles, the young pretender. Her more usual residence was with her brother, the proprietor of Milton ; but such seems to have been the estimation of her character, that she was beloved by every clan, rebellionists or not.
She did not see the Prince Charles until after the battle of Culloden, when he was a wanderer, with- out a home, and without friends or adherents. His forces had been slaughtered and routed, and he him- self driven to the hills and caves of his kingdom to find a hiding-place ; and at such a moment Flora MacDonald adopted him and his cause. She dis- guised him in a female dress, and guided him from island to island ; and, after encountering every hard- ship and every peril, put him into the way to escape to France, where he had friends on and around the throne.
Flora MacDonald was arrested, confined to prison, and after a year was released, and then carried into the court society of London by Lady Primrose, a jacobite lady of wealth and distinction. It is record-
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ed that twenty coaches of the proudest names of the realm stood at the door of Lady Primrose, to pay their respects to the heroine of the Scotch rebellion, only a few days after her release. A chaise-and-four were fitted up to take her back to Scotland; and when she was consulted as to who should escort her home, she selected her fellow-prisoner, General Malcolm McLeod, who boasted that he " came to London to be hanged, but rode back in a chaise-and- four with Flora MacDonald."
She afterwards married Kingsburg MacDonald, of Kingsburg, the son of one of her old associates in the perilous salvation of Prince Charles ; and he, like all the Highland gentlemen, was encumbered with heavy obligations, in the way of private debts, and still heavier oaths of fealty to the house of Ha- nover. In 1773, Doctor Johnson and Mr. Boswell visited the house of Kingsburg MacDonald, and were entertained by the generosity and hospitality of the proprietor and his noble spouse. She was then a fine, genteel-looking woman, full of the en- thusiasm of her early life; and as she was now the mistress of the house in which both the fugitive prince and herself had been once entertained by the father of her husband, she put the great living patriarch of English letters in the same bed in which her un- fortunate prince had on that occasion slept. In the tour to the Hebrides, it is related that Kingsburg MacDonald was embarrassed in his private affairs, and contemplated a migration to America.
I think it was in 1775 when she arrived in
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North Carolina and settled at Cross Creek, the seat of the present town of Fayetteville. It was a stormy period of our history ; and those who came among us at that time to seek peace and content- ment were disappointed, for they met, at their very landing, civil and intestine war. The policy of the royal governor, too, was to carry along with him the Highlanders, whom he represented as still liable to confiscation of estate for their former rebellion. The prudent emigrants were too recently from the bloody field of Culloden to run heedlessly into another war of extermination. They measured the strength of the English government by their own experience, and seeing around them no prince of their own blood to lead them on to battle, they nearly to a man joined the royal standard.
The truth is, the countrymen of Flora MacDonald were incapable of appreciating the nature of our re- volution. They had come to North Carolina in quest of fortune and undisturbed peace, and clung to the government from a double sense of interest and of fear. The sublime idea of an American empire was not within the range of their hopes or anticipa- tions ; but Scotland was again to be their home, when King George should have forgotten their rebel- lion, and fortune should again have restored to them wealth and importance.
Kingsburg MacDonald entered with much zeal into the cause of the royal government, and assisted his kinsman, General Donald MacDonald, in his ex- tensive preparations for the famous battle of Moore's
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Creek. Flora, too, is said to have embraced, with much enthusiasm, the same cause, and to have ex- horted her countrymen to adhere to their king. The settlement of Cross Creek was the metropolis of the Highlanders, and there they congregated to listen to the counsels of their aged chiefs. The MacDonalds, the MacLeods, the Camerons, the MacNeils, and the Campbells were all represented there in the person of some beloved and hereditary chieftain.
On the 1st of February, 1776, Donald MacDonald issued a proclamation, calling upon all loyal High- landers to join his standard at Cross Creek, and on that day fifteen hundred men mustered under his command. The enthusiastic spirit of Flora forgot that it was not for "her Charlie" she was warring, and tradition says she was seen among the ranks, encouraging and exhorting them to battle. Loyalty seems to have been a strange principle in the bosom of the Highlanders, Thirty years before this period, they fought the battle of Culloden against the house of Hanover ; and now they are on the eve of a similar engagement for its support, against the cause of freedom.
Kingsburg MacDonald was a captain in the army of Donald MacDonald, and his wife followed the fortunes of the camp. She proceeded with the army towards the camp of General Moore, on Rock- fish River, and was with her husband on the morn- ing of the twenty-sixth of February, on the banks of Moore's Creek, a small stream in the county of New Hanover. The Whig army, under the command
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of Colonel Lillington, was encamped on the other side of this stream; and on the morning of the twenty- seventh the celebrated battle of Moore's Creek was fought, the Highlanders signally routed, Colonels MacLeod and Campbell both slain, Kingsburg MacDonald taken prisoner, and Flora once more a fugitive, and indeed an outlaw. The Highlanders were a brave and loyal race, but, poor fellows, they had their Culloden in North Carolina as well as in Scotland.
Flora MacDonald returned to Cross Creek with- out her husband ; and there she found the Whig ban- ner triumphant, under the command of Colonel Alex- ander Martin, afterwards governor of the state. The sad reverses of her fortune seemed to have but begun. Tradition says her house was pillaged and her plantation ravaged by the cruelty of the Whigs, and there is too much reason to believe it true. The Highland population was, for many years, conquered, and kept in subjection by the remembrance of this defeat; and it is only during the latter part of the war, when the contest became more doubtful, that they again joined in the heat of the battle.
The Highlanders, and with them the husband of Flora MacDonald, there is too much reason to fear, shared the fate of the unfortunate rebellionists in 1745. Their estates were ravaged by force; and as soon as a state government was established, the rava- ges of the Whigs were legalized by an act of confisca- tion. Kingsburg MacDonald remained in North Caro- lina but a few years, when he embarked in a sloop of
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war for Scotland. Mr. Chambers, in his admirable history of the Rebellion of 1745, records a circumstance that occurred during the voyage, illustrative of her character. The sloop encountered a French ship, and in the thickest of the battle Flora was on the deck, encouraging the crew until the contest ceased. She afterwards philosophized, by saying that she had en- dangered her life for both the house of Stuart and the house of Hanover, but that she did not perceive she had profited by her exertions.
There is one anecdote connected with the battle of Moore's Creek, and with Donald MacDonald, who was a kinsman of Flora, the Highland chief, which deserves to be here recorded. He was an old vete- ran in the art of war, having been engaged as an of- ficer in the army of the young Pretender in 1745, in which character he appeared in the battle of Cullo- den. He was sick at the moment of the battle of Moore's Creek, and, committing the fate of his coun- trymen into the hands of his aid-de-camp, Colonel MacLeod, he remained in his camp. After his forces had been entirely routed, the Whig commanders found him alone, seated on a stump, and, as they walked up to him, he waved the parchment scroll of his commission in the air, and surrendered it into their hands.
The town of Fayetteville now covers the spot for- merly the metropolis of the Highland clans. There lived Flora MacDonald, and a host of others, whose names appear in the history of Scotland as brave and warlike spirits. To me it was a beautiful spot,
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as seen in 1828, before its destruction by fire, when the spring time of year contributed to embellish the banks of the small stream that winds its way through the very streets of the town. I remember one view which would have been a fit spot even for the romantic genius of Flora MacDonald. There was a small bridge that spanned the stream, connect- ing the court-house and the city-hall, and, standing on this bridge, you had first the office of Mr. Eccles, an accomplished attorney, immediately before you, suspended over the creek, and connected with the street by a bridge ; the stream then flowed on through a spacious and richly-cultivated garden, and then hid itself amidst a profusion of the richest shrubbery. On the left was the Episcopal church, and, away down the creek, the high steeple of the Presbyterian meeting-house shot up into the air as if it had been the monument of the spot. A beautiful crystal stream, with embroidered banks, winding its way through the heart of a city; such an ornament had the Cross Creek of the Highlanders. There is ano- ther creek, that courses along the southern extremity of the town and just below the city; the two streams apparently cross at right angles. The su- perstition was of old, that the waters actually cross- ed each other, but, by a little observation, you will perceive that the streams have, as it were, accident- ally touched, and, without farther conflict, separated, and gone off quietly on their serpentine courses. Hence the name of Cross Creek. The surrounding country is a sandy barren, with but little under-
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