A SENSE OF TIME AND PLACE
What must it have been like for sailing ships' crews landing on the sandy shores of the Carolinas in the summer of 1524 when Giovanni da Verrazano, the Italian explorer, traveled through the coastal area of the state between the Cape Fear River and Kitty Hawk? It was the impenetrable dismal as it was called, from the Latin, dies mali, or "evil days". And the days must have seemed truly evil as soldiers and explorers tried to penetrate the maritime forest along the coast, with sinks, bogs, and seeps, cat brier and tangled masses of vine, mosquitoes, poisonous snakes and alligators - and hardly a clear dry path anywhere to the inland. And yet, people trickled in, found the living good - found the living very good in fact, and stayed. More came, found the soils fruitful, established settlements, put down roots as generations of families followed, certain that this was, as Charles Kuralt described it, the "goodliest land". Many of the earliest settlers were English and Scots and some Scots in particular from Flora McDonald's party. Flora Macdonald had helped the Stuart Bonnie Prince Charlie in his unsuccessful attempt to regain the British throne, and had fled Scotland after the rebellion against England failed at the Battle of Culloden. They are the same Highland Scots who remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution, and were stopped from joining up with British forces on ships waiting near Cape Fear. The Battle of Moores Creek marked the kilt-clad Scot's last broadsword charge, against American patriots who took up the bridge's planks and repulsed the attempt. Ancient shallow seas had once covered the area as far inland as
Fayetteville, and you can explore the real old days at the
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