Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/30

28 large portion of the year upon the fortifications of the island. More than one hundred were sent, in September last, to Bermuda Hundred, to labor upon "Dutch Gap Canal" and elsewhere.

These occupations, with the toil expended upon their own premises, have kept the men generally employed, and given to the colony an aspect of industry. The few, in every community, who are incorrigibly lazy, and who deliberately intend to eat their bread in the sweat of another's face, undoubtedly have their representatives here. Considering the antecedents of these people, who can wonder at it?

Roanoke Island is favorably located for carrying on fisheries, especially of herring, mullet, blue-fish, and shad. These have heretofore furnished one of the principal means of subsistence to the inhabitants. Preparations were made to pursue this business for the advantage of the colony; but the shad season in 1864 was much less productive than usual, the nets being broken and destroyed by ice and storms in the early spring.

Mr. Holland Streeter was entrusted with the charge of this business, and has pursued it, with a small gang of fishermen, through the year. Up to Jan. 1st, 1865, the income of the fisheries, as reported by Mr. Streeter, was $1,404.27 It is expected to be much larger during the approaching season, if the elements prove propitious.

The mill before alluded to was substantially erected, near the military Headquarters of the island, during the spring and early summer, and has now been for several months in successful operation. The engine is of seventy horse-power, carrying several circular saws, a turning lathe, and a grist mill. Its capacity to produce different styles of lumber, and to convert grain into the form so widely used by the negroes, and indeed by all the Southern people for food, makes it a positive addition to the wealth and resources of the island, and as valuable to the whites as to the blacks. The officers of the Government, the troops, the attachés of the army, the white natives, and the negroes, are sharing alike in the benefits of this Northern institution. Thus do enterprise, thrift, and productiveness enter the gates which have been opened by the demon of war. On the 7th day of February, 1862, the very spot where now stands this peaceful engineery of labor was enveloped in the smoke of contending