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 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.