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 HARNETT'S HOUSE, "HILTON," NEAR WILMINGTON.

attempts to settle it had failed, as we have seen; and, added to the terrors of the coast, which its very name, Cape Fear, advertised, the lower river had been for years the refuge and rendezvous of bands of pirates. As early as 1684 they are known to have resorted to these remote and solitary waters, and early in the eighteenth century it was the headquarters of that nefarious band among whom Stead Bonnet and Teach, or Black Beard, were leaders, who with