[In the following essay, Masterson considers whether Byrd's negative impressions of colonial North Carolina were shared by other travelers.]

During the spring and autumn of 1728, as one of the Virginia commissioners appointed to run a boundary between Virginia and North Carolina, Colonel William Byrd had occasion to traverse the border from Currituck Inlet, on the Atlantic coast, to a point in the foothills 241 miles to the west. In The History of the Dividing Line Run in the Year of Our Lord 1728 he disparages not only the border country but the whole province of North Carolina, which he declares to approach nearer than any other part of the world to “the Description of Lubberland.”¹ Scattered among notes of surveying, reports of Indian customs, and accounts of swamp and wilderness, his strictures upon North Carolina may be collected as an indictment with six heads.

(I) The inhabitants of North Carolina suffer disadvantages natural to their place of residence. Some parts of the province are almost as sandy and barren as the deserts of Africa (p. 90);² others are swampy and unhealthful. The lower grounds (p. 50), including Edenton, the capital (p. 74), are infested by “that Carolina plague, musquetos” (p. 96). For want of navigation and commerce the best estates yield little more than “a coarse subsistence” (p. 52). A certain amount of Carolina trade is drawn to Norfolk, Virginia (p. 36). “The Saints of New England” carry off tobacco without paying duty (p. 42); the Carolinians, doubtless because of poverty, consume New England molasses—“Long Sugar”—instead of sugar; and their rum, from the same region, is called “Kill-Devil” (p. 92). Since the expense of salt commonly obliges them to eat their pork fresh, they contract scurvy, which often develops into the yaws. This “country-Distemper,” which destroys the palate and the nose, exhibits all the symptoms of syphilis (p. 54). (II) On the other hand, inconsistently enough, nature in North Carolina favors laziness. “That Indolent climate” discourages effort (p. 110); corn grows almost without cultivation (p. 92); and hogs, foraging in the pocosins and dismals or living on mast in the woods, provide plenty of pork (p. 92), which, however, fills the Carolinians with “gross Humours” (p. 54). Nothing at Edenton is expensive but law, physic, and strong drink (p. 96). The men of North Carolina lie abed half the forenoon or pass their time in “their belov'd Chimney Corners” while the women spin, weave, and knit. Like Indians, the men force their wives to do most of the work, and “are Sloathfull in every thing but getting of Children” (pp. 50, 66, 68, 72, 92). They take no thought for the morrow, and though they love cider they are too improvident to plant orchards (p. 110). Instead of feeding their cattle they turn them loose to winter in the swamps, so that “these Indolent Wretches” have no milk during half the year, and no dung is collected to improve the soil (p. 54). The goal of their ambition is “the Carolina Felicity of having nothing to do” (p. 98).³ (III) Religion does not thrive in North Carolina. There is no place of public worship (p. 104), and no tribute is paid to God or Caesar (pp. 96, 104) in “a climate where no clergyman can Breathe” (p. 72). The law empowers justices of the peace to marry “all those who will not take One another's Word,” and christening depends on the casual arrival of a visiting churchman (p. 72). No people, however, is less troubled with superstitions and “Religious Fumes” (p. 72); most days are Sabbaths (p. 72); and the inhabitants of Edenton are without hypocrisy, “acting very Frankly and above-board in all their Excesses” (p. 96). Where churches are neglected the Quakers multiply “for want of Ministers to Pilot the People a decenter way to Heaven” (p. 68).⁴ (IV) Government is weak in North Carolina. Governors are treated with great freedom and familiarity (p. 96). Laws are feebly executed; the magistrates have little authority (p. 104). “In N Carolina, every One does what seems best in his own Eyes” (p. 74; cf. p. 104). (V) Such a province is, therefore, a natural asylum for outcasts: persons with “a thorough Aversion to Labor” (p. 92; cf. p. 102), violators of marriage laws (pp. 46, 48, 50), fugitives from debt (pp. 40, 58), runaway slaves (p. 56), and criminals (p. 58). (VI) In view of all this, it is not surprising that the borderers, when the line is run, hope to find themselves on the Carolina side (pp. 74, 88).

Such are Colonel Byrd's charges. How far are they confirmed or extended by independent observations of other travelers in colonial North Carolina, without reference to information from other sources than printed records of travel? The evidence falls under the six heads of Byrd's indictment.

I

Few visitors admired the scenery of eastern North Carolina. Approaching Wilmington from the sea, Janet Schaw described America as “a dreary waste of white barren sand, and melancholy nodding pines. … All seems dreary, savage and desert.”⁵ An anonymous observer remarked that travelers from the North, following the main highway through Carolina, saw only “a mere Sand Bank.”⁶ William Logan found the land between Edenton and Wilmington to be

very poor, flatt, sandy, & barren, & nothing but Pines growing on it, excepting it be near some Branch of a River where there are some Oaks, but within sixty or seventy miles of this place [Wilmington] is intirely a bed of Sand & worse than any I ever saw in the Jerseys; but they say that at the Head of their Rivers they have very good Land.⁷

The Surveyor of Post Roads on the Continent of North America declared that the road between Wilmington and Charleston was

certainly the most tedious and disagreeable of any on the Continent of North America, it is through a poor, sandy, barren, gloomy country without accomodations for travellers. Death is painted in the countenances of those you meet, that indeed happens but seldom on the road. Neither man nor beast can stand a long journey thro' so bad a country where there's much fatigue and no refreshment.⁸

J. F. D. Smyth characterized the region north of Edenton as “a country covered with sand and pines, a continued dead flat, infested with swamps, and the land every where miserably poor and barren.”⁹ He had no higher opinion of the four hundred miles between Edenton and Georgetown, South Carolina:

It is all universally an immense sand-bank covered with pines, which however generally grow very tall and lofty.

It is likewise totally a wide extended dead flat, covered in a thousand places with stagnated water, which without doubt must be extremely unhealthful; this the sallow cadaverous complexion and countenances of the inhabitants sufficiently evinces.¹⁰

The Great Dismal Swamp on the Virginia border and the Great Alligator Dismal Swamp between Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, the latter swamp “reported to be named from a monstrous Alligator or Crocodile of a most prodigious magnitude that once was seen here,”

are in a great degree inaccessible, and harbour prodigious multitudes of every kind of wild beasts peculiar to America, as well as run-away Negroes, who in these horrible swamps are perfectly safe, and with the greatest facility elude the most diligent search of their pursuers.

Run-away Negroes have resided in these places for twelve, twenty, or thirty years and upwards, subsisting themselves in the swamp upon corn, hogs, and fowls, that they raised on some of the spots not perpetually under water, nor subject to be flooded, as forty-nine parts out of fifty of it are; and on such spots they have erected habitations, and cleared small fields around them; yet these have always been perfectly impenetrable to any of the inhabitants of the country around, even to those nearest to and best acquainted with the swamps.¹¹

The roads in North Carolina were so poorly marked that John Brickell, M.D., heard of wayfarers “lost for eight, others for fourteen Days, before they could meet with any human Creature to inform them what part of the Province they were in.”¹² Smyth lost his way near the Chowan River:

Being extremely fatigued, hungry, and dry, I called at several miserable hovels, at the distance of five or six miles asunder, but could neither obtain directions on my way, or any kind of refreshment; even the water was so very ill tasted, and insalubrious, that it could scarcely be drank.

I rode on in this miserable dilemma and precarious situation, among these ignorant wretches, until night approached, when they all refused to permit me to lodge under their shelters: “Wondering (as they said) where I came from, or why I should come there, where nobody comes; but (telling me) if I could get to Mr. Tyers's, about seven miles off, I might get quarters; for he often had strange, outlandish folks to lodge at his house; and was a rich man, and had a mill, and a blacksmith's shop, and a still.”

These people are the most wretchedly ignorant of any I ever met with. They could not tell me the name of the place, county, or parish they resided in, nor any other place in the adjacent country; neither could they furnish me with any directions, by which I might again discover and ascertain the right way.

Their appearance also is equally sordid and mean, being of a sallow complexion and yellowish hue, almost as tawney as mulattoes, with the smoak of the light-wood (the roots and knots of pine, so named here), which is their whole fuel, clothed in cotton rags, that had been once dyed of some colour, and all enveloped in dirt and nastiness.¹³

William Logan found no ferry across Albemarle Sound (two miles wide at Edenton); a storm delayed him a day and a half at Wilmington when the ferry was disabled.¹⁴ South of Wilmington Hugh Finlay passed two bad bridges, a very bad bridge, a long causeway, a stretch of deep sand, a small, flat, leaky ferry, a road across an island in the Cape Fear River (built of rotten logs through a swamp and hardly passable with a horse), and a second ferry. “This public avenue,” he remarked, “to the most flourishing town in the Province, will induce a stranger to believe, that the people in this country have no Laws, such is the report concerning North Carolina.”¹⁵

North Carolina was considered unhealthful. Hardly anyone could pass a year at Edenton without an attack of chills and fever.¹⁶ Low, uncleared lands and stagnant water, since long, narrow, sandy islands almost excluded the tide from the sounds, rendered New Bern and, indeed, much of the province unwholesome in summer; the inhabitants were “much aflicted with feavors,” and at New Bern “on hot Calm Days youl see a thick scum on the water, which occasions a Disagreeable stensh. at this time the fishes ly Dead on the water.”¹⁷ John Lawson mentioned the prevalence of yaws, a disease which, he said, differs from the pox only in lacking a gonorrhoea.¹⁸ Dr. Brickell pronounced yaws to be a venereal disorder contracted from intercourse with negroes, “by which means it is hereditary in many Families in Carolina, and by it some have lost their Palates and Noses.”¹⁹ He listed some strange remedies for sickness: for instance, “The Louse is not plenty in this Province. They are eaten by Rusticks for the Jaundice, and Consumption, and to provoke Urine.”²⁰ In direct contradiction to Colonel Byrd, he asserted that Edenton was very little troubled with “Musketo's.”²¹

The volume of trade between North Carolina and England was much smaller than that of other Southern colonies.²² Having no good ports, North Carolina was obliged to deal largely through Virginia and South Carolina. The older plantations, it is true, ran back from the rivers into the woods, and most planters had plenty of lumber to build boats and a dock; but the shallow inlets from the ocean to the sounds, frequently opened or filled by storms, kept out almost all but small craft, mostly from New England, and piraguas.²³ Men who made a living with little boats in the sounds and rivers enjoyed no high reputation.²⁴ An English writer ascribed the neglect of North Carolina to the expense of lighterage and to the attractions of Charleston for settlers:

For a long time it was but ill inhabited, and by an indigent and disorderly people, who had little property, and hardly any law or government to protect them in what they had. As commodious land grew scarce in the other colonies, people in low circumstances observing that a great deal of excellent and convenient land was yet to be patented in North Carolina, were induced by that circumstance to plant themselves there.²⁵

While land remained cheap, one man might own two thousand cattle and hogs running loose in the woods.²⁶ “Such herds of cattle and swine are to be found in no other colonies; and when this is better settled, they will not be so common here; for at present the woods are all in common.”²⁷ It was foreseen that the production of tar, pitch, turpentine, and resin would decrease when the land was cleared and settled.²⁸ The little tobacco that was grown was usually sold in Virginia, where merchants paid what they liked; and cattle or hogs were driven mostly to Virginia or South Carolina for sale.²⁹

II

The North Carolinians in general were “very indolent & lazy.”³⁰ Cattle and horses, as small as English yearlings, looked out for themselves all winter; “if they live, they live. … When spring comes the animals are so reduced by hunger and cold that they hardly recover before fall.”³¹ In cold weather they fed mostly on the long moss which hung from the trees.³² “So soon as a Cow calves she is turned into the woods to shift for herself & Calf, which they brand & mark & keep no Dairy's nor milk their Cows but when by chance they come home.”³³ Dr. Brickell called North Carolina planters “the worst Horse-masters I have ever met with.”³⁴ Only the hogs, more numerous in North Carolina than anywhere else, flourished in neglect:

The Porke is excellent good, from their Hogs feeding on Straw-berries, Wallnuts, Peaches, Maiz, and several other sorts of delicate Fruits, which are the natural produce of this Country, and make it the sweetest Meat the World can afford; as is well known to all Strangers that have been in that country.³⁵

An English economist detailed the unfortunate consequences of failing to utilize “that article essential to all husbandry, dung.”³⁶ Dr. Brickell remarked that he had never seen one acre in North Carolina “managed as it ought to be,” and that if farmers in Europe were equally careless their land would produce nothing but weeds.³⁷ Cornfields, in fact, were so full of weeds that it was difficult to find the crop.³⁸ In 1752, traveling 140 miles across northern North Carolina, Bishop Spangenberg saw not a single wagon or plow.³⁹ A man and a boy, with two horses, could have done as much work in a day as twenty negroes with hoes.⁴⁰ In general, however, farmers took things as they came. When the abused soil began to lose its fertility and when game became scarce, a planter would remove to new land farther west, leaving “numerous spots, which, having been under culture, and exhausted, lie absolutely barren for some years, and then are covered gradually with weeds, bushes, and rubbish, among which forest-trees at last shoot up.”⁴¹

Poverty, as Colonel Byrd had noted, was no hindrance to procreation. North Carolina girls, said John Lawson,

marry very young; some at Thirteen or Fourteen; and She that stays till Twenty, is reckon'd a stale Maid; which is a very indifferent Character in that warm Country. The Women are very fruitful; most Houses being full of Little Ones. It has been observ'd that Women long marry'd, and without Children, in other Places, have remov'd to Carolina, and become joyful Mothers. They have very easy Travail in their Child-bearing, in which they are so happy, as seldom to miscarry.⁴²

A shell-fish called “man of noses” was valued “for increasing Vigour in Men, and making barren Women fruitful; but I think they have no need of that Fish; for the Women in Carolina are fruitful enough without their Helps.”⁴³

Even the women, according to Brickell, “do not over burthen themselves with care and Industry”;⁴⁴ but they are, nevertheless, “the most Industrious in these Parts.”⁴⁵ Miss Schaw, from Edinburgh, inquired at Wilmington why American women were commonly superior in gentility and the graces of life to their husbands, who, as a rule, impartially divided their amorous attentions between their wives and their negro wenches.⁴⁶ Dresses, dancing, and ceremonies at a Wilmington ball reminded her of a Dutch painting; the men made her think of tar and feathers.⁴⁷ Everybody of fashion was invited to Mrs. Corbin's funeral; but just as the service was to begin, more than a hundred uninvited persons arrived noisily in canoes and almost drowned the clergyman's voice. They devoured the banquet that had been prepared for the guests, and returned, like crows from carrion, to their little clearings in the woods beside the creeks.⁴⁸ Poor men, often accompanied by their wives, would often

come to the Towns, and there remain Drinking Rum, Punch, and other Liquors for Eight or Ten Days successively, and after they have committed this Excess, will not drink any Spiritous Liquor, 'till such time as they take the next Frolick, as they call it, which is generally in two or three months.⁴⁹

In a settlement near Tar River (where for sport the inhabitants cut off the ears and tails of Smyth's cat and of her kittens), when Smyth went swimming with a Mr. Glen, the latter's wife and sister came to the water-side and hid the men's clothes. Smyth recovered his, but Glen

ran out of the water, and pursued the women stark naked. Having caught his wife, he brought her into the room where her sister and I were, locked the door, took out the key, threw her down on the bed, and notwithstanding her utmost endeavours to prevent him and disengage herself, committed an act that a mere savage would have been ashamed to have attempted in public. This he would afterwards boast of in all companies, in the presence of his wife and every other lady, as an excellent joke, and prodigious piece of humour.⁵⁰

III

Having admitted the laziness and luxury of the North Carolinians,⁵¹ Dr. Brickell asked whether “it can be admired, that the generality of them live after a loose and lacivious Manner, when … they have no Clergy to instruct them, and recommend the Duties of a Christian.”⁵² The Reverend Hugh Jones, of Williamsburg, Virginia, averred that little religion could be

expected among a Collection of such People as fly thither from other Places for Safety and Livelihood, left to their own Liberty without Restraint or Instruction. … The common nominal Christians live there not much better than Heathens.⁵³

In 1739 the Reverend George Whitefield found in North Carolina “scarce so much as the Form of Religion”; most of the missionaries sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts were walking directly contrary to the Gospel.⁵⁴ The efforts of missionaries appeared to have borne little fruit. The Reverend John Blair, upon his arrival in 1704, had felt obliged to buy two horses, one of which was for a guide, since a stranger could not find his way alone. Forbidden to settle at one place (the charity of the Society being intended for the whole country), he rode about thirty miles a day and often slept in the woods. The people were so scattered that they could not easily come together to hear sermons or to bring their children for baptism. Blair returned to England destitute and thirty-five pounds in debt.⁵⁵ In 1708 the Reverend William Gordon found few parishioners who could read or write; most of the vestrymen were illiterate, and all were ignorant and quarrelsome. Bad roads, the ordinary diet of salt pork, corn bread, and muddy water, and a general lack of encouragement and income soon terminated Gordon's services to Carolina.⁵⁶ The Reverend Giles Rainsford wrote in 1712, soon after arriving, “I like the Country far better than any I have hitherto seen and certainly by nature tis one of the best in the world”;⁵⁷ but he presently changed his opinion. With hardly an exception the Society's missionaries sent dismal reports from North Carolina.

The letters of the Reverend John Urmston, who was in Chowan, Perquimans, Pasquotank, and Currituck counties from 1710 to 1721, would make a volume.⁵⁸ The people would contribute nothing to support the church, feeling that they did a favor in merely coming to hear the minister.⁵⁹ Urmston complained that he and his family had lived many a day on a dry crust and salt water from the Sound.⁶⁰ He was often obliged to “work hard with Axe Hoe & spade … dig a garden raise beans peas &c.”⁶¹ His circuit included points seventy miles apart. “Every body would have a Church by his own door every Sunday or not at all.”⁶² Vestrymen met at taverns, not to consider the affairs of the church but to drink and fight.⁶³ They “treat us with a great deal of formality and think there is no difference between a Gentleman and a labourer all fellows at Foot Ball.”⁶⁴ Three precincts had no church, though the Quakers had meeting-houses. The unfurnished church building in Chowan was ready to fall, having

neither floor nor seats only a few loose benches upon the sand the Key being lost the door stood open ever since I came into the Country. All the Hoggs and Cattle flee thither for shade in the summer and warmth in Winter the first dig holes and bury themselves these with the rest make it a loathsome place with their dung and nastiness which is the peoples regard to Churches.⁶⁵

Urmston's services were unwelcome in certain quarters:

There are about 40 or fifty families at Alligator and Scogalong about 20 miles down the sound towards the South East from where I lived many marry'd and have children who never were baptized nor ever saw a minister on their shore. I have offered to go thither provided they would procure me a passage a day has been twice prefix'd But they never came for me so indifferent are they and cold in their souls health and tis to be feared live like Beasts I have heard of monstrous doings among them.⁶⁶

In 1712 Urmston wrote that he had had to live on wild fruit, which had caused a violent flux lasting eleven weeks. He would quit “this wretched country” if he could.⁶⁷ In 1714 he declared that he must beg or starve.⁶⁸ By 1716 he had lost his credit, and the Society was protesting his bills.⁶⁹ His own son added to his troubles:

I have been forced to turn him adrift for his undutifulness in combining with my Servants to ruin me he got a servant wench with child who had 2 years to serve rendered her not only useless but even a burden to me yet am forced to keep her not knowing where to get a better.⁷⁰

In 1721, he said, “I am buried alive in this hell of a hole.”⁷¹ In a final begging letter, written at London later in 1721, he reviewed his nearly twelve years of service

among an ungrateful people … with great inconveniences of living in such an obscure corner of the world inhabited by the dregs and gleanings of all other English Colonies and a very unhealthy Country which have driven many Clergymen out of it not being able to stay so many months as I have years and brought others to their Graves.⁷²

It is perhaps significant that on April 2, 1720, a grand jury had presented “Jn^o Urmstone Missionary for being Drunk.”⁷³

The numerous Quaker missionaries who visited Quaker congregations in North Carolina were not disposed to place that province upon a special eminence of either iniquity or godliness. Their journals do not imply that North Carolina differed in spiritual matters from other places where Quakers lived. James Logan, Philadelphia Quaker, found the Quakers of Perquimans County to be “sober, solid & grave, & I think very examplary in their Lifes & Conversation”;⁷⁴ but the Reverend William Gordon had described them as “extremely ignorant, insufferably proud and ambitious, and consequently ungovernable.”⁷⁵ Urmston complained that since justices of the peace were authorized to perform marriages, there were “many adulterous Weddings Christians unequally yoked with Quakers or Heathens.”⁷⁶

IV

The government of North Carolina was lax and corrupt. The Bernese and Palatine immigrants who settled New Bern under Christoph von Graffenried in 1710 learned that they had been deceived by promises.⁷⁷ When South Carolina, in 1711, sent forces under Colonel John Barnwell to aid in routing the Tuscarora Indians, the Assembly neglected and starved not only its helpers but its own militia, and on one occasion, according to report, most of the Assemblymen stripped stark naked and fought. As Barnwell wrote home,

Col. Boyd informed me that I was the occasion of all this for they were so long drinking my health that they knew not what they did, while poor me drink cold water … All ye Field officers came without a dram, a bit of meese bisket⁷⁸ or any kind of meat but hungry stomachs to devour my parcht corn flower, and they began to grumble for better victuals w^ch putt me in such a passion at all kinds of ill usages since I came here that I ordered one of their majors to be tyed neck & heels & kept him so, and whenever I heard a saucy word from any of them I imeadiately cutt him, for without this they are the most impertinent, imperious, cowardly Blockheads that ever God created & must be used like negros if you expect any good of them. … I am wild exclaiming against this place in writing but when I kiss your Hand I have such a tale to tell of the barefaced villainys daily committed here as will make y^r Hon^r for the future use this country as Virginia does.⁷⁹

In 1752 Bishop Spangenberg found the colony in great disorder, with jails broken open and murderers and thieves at large. The laws, he thought, were good but unenforced.⁸⁰

V

The border country or, according to others, the whole province of North Carolina was a haven of refuge for outcasts, outlaws, and paupers. When commissions were appointed in 1710 to run a boundary line the Virginians concluded that most of the witnesses sought were men of ill fame who had left Virginia.⁸¹ Near Albemarle Sound, as Urmston wrote, dwelt men and women of

loose dissolute and scandalous lives and practices … many of whom after their transportation from England have been banished out of all or most of the other colonies or for fear of punishment have fled hither. this is a nest of the most notorious profligates upon earth. Women forsake their husbands come in here and live with other men they are sometimes followed then a price is given to the husband and madam stays with her Gallant a report is spread abroad that the husband is dead then they become Man and Wife.⁸²

In 1721 the Board of Trade reported to King George:

The Government of this Province, having for many years been a very disorderly one, this becomes a place of refuge for all the vagabonds, whom either debt, or breach of the Laws have driven from the other Colonies on the Continent; and pirates have too frequently found entertainment amongst them.⁸³

The pirates referred to were Blackbeard (Edward Teach) and his men, whose insolence, robberies, and fornications had been connived at if not encouraged by the government of North Carolina.⁸⁴ To that province, said Bishop Spangenberg, came refugees from debt, deserters of wives and children, and whole bands of horse-thieves, thinking that “here no one would find them, and they could go on in impunity”; and their numbers were increased by people too poor to get land anywhere else or too lazy to feed their stock during the winter.⁸⁵ “This province,” declared an anonymous Frenchman in 1765, “is the azilum of the Convicts that have served their time in virginia and maryland. when at liberty they all (or great part) Come to this part where they are not Known.”⁸⁶

VI

In 1724 the disputed strip between Virginia and Carolina, fifteen miles broad, was described as “an Asylum for the Runagates of both Countries”;⁸⁷ and in 1710, when efforts had been made to determine the boundary, witnesses had hidden themselves in the woods in order not to be found at home for questioning by the Virginia commissioners.⁸⁸

No further references need be accumulated to demonstrate that Colonel Byrd was neither the first nor the last of colonial travelers to disparage North Carolina. Only five of his charges are unsupported.⁸⁹ A certain gusto in belaboring the victim of his ridicule is doubtless exhibited in his description of mosquitoes as a Carolina plague, and of the felicity of having nothing to do as a Carolina felicity, the plague and the felicity in question being pretty generally distributed; but there is little doubt that he reported substantially what he saw. Fine gentleman and coffee-house wit though he was,⁹⁰ his account of North Carolina is too thoroughly authenticated by other observers to be dismissed as a gratuitous exercise in polite satire.

Precisely how significant the foregoing collection of disparagements may be cannot be determined without weighing information from sources other than the records of travelers. No such estimate can be undertaken here. Certain qualifications, however, may be made in passing.

In the first place, it was not only in North Carolina that travelers noticed bad roads, weak government, religious indifference, drunkenness, careless agriculture, contented squalor, and the congregation of fugitives, outcasts, and paupers. Nowhere else, on the other hand, did all these disadvantages exist together, and nowhere else did so many of them appear characteristic rather than exceptional and sporadic.

Such conditions were most noticeable within fifty or a hundred miles of the highway between Portsmouth and Charleston through Edenton, Bath, New Bern, and Wilmington, among swamps and pine barrens through which the ordinary traveler was obliged to pass. The new settlements founded in the western foothills and mountain valleys after the middle of the century exhibited no combination of faults that was peculiar to those settlements.⁹¹ Backwoods society in the Appalachian highlands, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, was much more nearly uniform than the society of the coastal plain. The bad reputation of North Carolina affected chiefly the eastern part of the province—the area which travelers were best acquainted with. To equate eastern North Carolina as observed by Colonel Byrd with Connecticut as observed by Madam Knight, under the common designation of “the Frontier as Lubberland,”⁹² is to trifle with an abused noun which has already lost whatever precision of meaning it may once have had. Byrd's Lubberland was marked by strongly local peculiarities, having little in common with those of Connecticut or those of western North Carolina. It is not clear upon what grounds the three regions can be subsumed under the general head of “frontiers.”

The disagreeable remarks of travelers in eastern North Carolina were not entirely unmixed with praise. John Lawson describes in glowing colors the beauty of tidewater plantations and the hospitality of planters.⁹³ Josiah Quincy gives a favorable account of North Carolina as contrasted with her southern neighbor.⁹⁴ Dr. Brickell lauds “the best established Government in the world.”⁹⁵ Scotus Americanus urges discontented Scots to settle in

the best country in the world for a poor man to go to, and do well. … Here each may sit safe, and at ease, under his own fig-tree, indulging himself in the natural bent of his genius, in patronizing the useful arts of life, and in practicing the virtues of humanity.⁹⁶

The tract by Scotus Americanus, like many other eighteenth-century pamphlets, is designed to attract European immigrants to American land; its purpose prescribes its contents. Other scattered tributes to North Carolina concern mostly the fertile foothills in the west, not the barrens and dismals of the longer-settled east.

The evil repute of North Carolina, to which Colonel Byrd's literary talent gave the most pointed but by no means the sole expression, was not entirely a phenomenon of colonial days. During the Revolution, it is true, the colony fought beside her twelve revolting neighbors; but there were many Loyalists in North Carolina, she was noted after the war for her monetary policy, and she hesitated to ratify the Federal Constitution. Though a pretty thoroughgoing post-Revolutionary arraignment of North Carolina by Jedidiah Morse of New Haven⁹⁷ contains hardly any charge that was not equally applicable to the South in general, North Carolina was known in the early nineteenth century as the Rip van Winkle of the South.⁹⁸

Notes

1. William Byrd's Histories of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, ed. W. K. Boyd (Raleigh, 1929), p. 92. I am indebted to Professor Boyd and the North Carolina Historical Commission for permission to quote from this work.

2. Page numbers inserted in the text refer to Boyd's edition.

3. Byrd specifies, however (p. 304), that laziness and easy living prevail not only in Carolina but in the southern part of Virginia.

4. Byrd speaks here of Nansemond County, Virginia, but his opinion of Quakers is equally relevant to those of Carolina.

5. Journal of a Lady of Quality; Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the Years 1774 to 1776, ed. E. W. Andrews and C. McL. Andrews (New Haven and London, 1923), pp. 279-280.

6. A New Voyage to Georgia. By a Young Gentleman. Giving an Account of His Travels to South Carolina, and Part of North Carolina (2d ed., London, 1737), p. 47.

7. “William Logan's Journal of a Journey to Georgia, 1745,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XXXVI, 15 (Jan., 1912). Hereinafter cited as Pennsylvania Magazine.

8. Journal Kept by Hugh Finlay … during His Survey of the Post Offices between Falmouth and Casco Bay in the Province of Massachusetts, and Savannah in Georgia (Brooklyn, 1867), p. 67. Finlay visited Carolina in 1774.

9. J. F. D. Smyth, A Tour in the United States of America (London, 1784), II, 103. Smyth traveled in North Carolina in the early 1770's; the precise date is uncertain.

10. Ibid., II, 94.

11. Ibid., II, 101-102. Cf. II, 239.

12. The Natural History of North-Carolina. With an Account of the Trade, Manners, and Customs of the Christian and Indian Inhabitants (Dublin, 1737), p. 263. Brickell was in North Carolina in Feb., 1730, perhaps 1730/1731 (p. 387). A John Brickell was among the signers of “The Grand Jury's Address to His Majesty,” Edenton, April 1, 1731 (The Colonial Records of North Carolina, ed. W. L. Saunders, Raleigh, 1886, III, 135).

13. J. F. D. Smyth, op. cit., I, 103-104.

14. “Journal,” Pennsylvania Magazine, XXXVI, 9-14.

15. Journal, p. 66. Finlay learned (p. 74) that the road had been granted forever to Colonel William Day, the King's Attorney's son-in-law, on condition of keeping it in repair. For further information about the island and about methods of road-building near Wilmington, see Alexander Schaw, “Description of North Carolina,” in Janet Schaw, Journal, pp. 279-280.

16. Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg, “The Spangenberg Diary,” Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, ed. A. L. Fries (Raleigh, 1922), I, 38. Bishop Spangenberg, in 1752, led Moravians from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to their new settlement at Wachovia (in the vicinity of Salem).

17. “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies,” American Historical Review, XXVI, 735 (July, 1921). The Frenchman landed at Beaufort in 1765 and traveled north.

18. A New Voyage to Carolina; Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of That Country: Together with the Present State Thereof (London, 1709), p. 18. Lawson had lived in North Carolina since 1701; at the time of writing he was Surveyor-General of the province.

19. Natural History, p. 48.

20. P. 165.

21. P. 255. Mosquitoes may have been more numerous than usual in 1728!

22. In 1769 the exports of North Carolina to Great Britain and other markets were estimated at a three-year average of £68,350, of which tar, turpentine, and pitch amounted to £17,850; boards, staves, joists, shingles, masts, and lumber to £15,000; and tobacco to £14,000; the imports from Great Britain amounted to £18,000. At the same time the exports of Virginia and Maryland combined were £1,040,000, of South Carolina £395,666, and of Georgia £74,200; and their imports were respectively £865,000, £365,000, and £49,000 (Alexander Cluny, The American Traveller, London, 1769, pp. 82, 83, 88, 89, 94, 95, 100, 101). Cluny advises North Carolina to grow corn and wine (pp. 90-91). North Carolina trade passing through Virginia or South Carolina would, of course, augment the apparent exports and imports of those provinces.

23. Brickell, Natural History, pp. 4-5; Spangenberg, “Diary,” Records of the Moravians, I, 40; Smyth, Tour, II, 93; J. Chetwynd, P. Doeminique, M. Bladen, and E. Ashe, “Copy of a Representation of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations to the King upon the State of His Majesties Colonies & Plantations on the Continent of North America [1721],” Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, ed. E. B. O'Callaghan (Albany, 1885), V, 609. Wilmington, south of the sounds, had direct access to the ocean, somewhat impeded by a bar at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

24. Scotus Americanus, “Informations Concerning the Province of North Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Review, III, 619 (Oct., 1926).

25. An Account of the European Settlements in America (London, 1758), II, 248-249. (This compilation is usually ascribed to Edmund Burke.) The passage is copied, without acknowledgment, almost verbatim (save for the change of “indigent” to “indolent”) by J. H. Wynne, A General History of the British Empire in America (London, 1770), II, 290.

26. American Husbandry. Containing an Account of the Soil, Climate, Production and Agriculture, of the British Colonies in North-America and the West-Indies; with Observations on the Advantages and Disadvantages of Settling in Them, Compared with Great Britain and Ireland. By an American (London, 1775), I, 336-337. This “American” does not profess ever to have visited America, though it would be difficult to find printed sources for much of his usually accurate information.

27. Ibid., I, 338.

28. Ibid., I, 342-344.

29. Spangenberg, “Diary,” Records of the Moravians, I, 39; “Journal of a French Traveller,” American Historical Review, XXVI, 738; Smyth, Tour, I, 175; II, 98-99.

30. Logan, “Journal,” Pennsylvania Magazine, XXXVI, 15-16. The people of Beaufort, in particular, were “very lasy and Indolent” (“Journal of a French Traveller,” American Historical Review, XXVI, 733). Johann Rudolff Ochs, depending upon information from others, says of North Carolina: “Es führend [sic] die Einwohner dieser Provintz gemeinlich ein müssiges Leben weilen sie mit wenig Arbeit ihre Underhaltung erobern und den Überflusz nicht so kommlich als wie in Süd-Carolina verhandlen können so wenden sie nicht viel Mühe an grossen Vorrath zu bekommen sondern vergnügen sich mehrentheils mit ihrer Underhaltung und etwas übriges vor die Kleidung so ihnen die von Neu Engelland zubringen zu vertauschen” (Americanischer Wegweiser oder kurtze und eigentliche Beschreibung der Englischen Provintzen in Nord-America, sonderlich aber der Landschafft Carolina, Bern, 1711, pp. 23-24).

31. Spangenberg, “Diary,” Records of the Moravians, I, 39.

32. “Journal of a French Traveller,” American Historical Review, XXVI, 739.

33. Logan, “Journal,” Pennsylvania Magazine, XXXVI, 15.

34. Natural History, p. 53.

35. Ibid., p. 254.

36. American Husbandry, I, 364. Not only the quantity, he declares, but also the quality of this article could be greatly improved.

37. Natural History, pp. 14-15.

38. American Husbandry, I, 349.

39. “Diary,” Records of the Moravians, I, 39.

40. Schaw, Journal, p. 163.

41. American Husbandry, I, 364-365.

42. New Voyage, p. 84. (Copied by Brickell, Natural History, p. 31.)

43. Lawson, New Voyage, p. 162.

44. Natural History, p. 254.

45. P. 32. Cf. Lawson, New Voyage, p. 84.

46. Journal, pp. 154-155.

47. Ibid., p. 154. She concedes, however, that many of the ladies would make a figure in any part of the world.

48. Ibid., p. 171.

49. Brickell, Natural History, pp. 33-34. He adds that “the better Sort, or those of good Œconomy,” seldom visit the taverns. Among other amusements he names horse-racing, gambling, cock-fighting, and wrestling. Though musical instruments are “very scarce in Carolina,” everyone likes to dance.

50. Tour, I, 133.

51. Natural History, p. 33.

52. Ibid., p. 37.

53. The Present State of Virginia. Giving a Particular and Short Account of the Indian, English, and Negroe Inhabitants of That Colony (London, 1724), pp. 78-79.

54. A Continuation of the Reverend Mr. Whitefield's Journal, from His Embarking after the Embargo, to His Arrival at Savannah in Georgia (2d ed., London, 1740), p. 86. Cf. p. 72.

55. “Mr. Blair's Mission to North Carolina,” Colonial Records, I, 600-603 (1886).

56. “Mr. Gordon to the Secretary,” ibid., I, 708-715.

57. Letter, ibid., I, 860.

58. In 1712 he wrote to the Secretary of the Society that he had received but one reply to more than fifty letters (Letter, ibid., I, 887). He repeatedly accused the Society of breaking its contract, refusing to send money according to agreement, and declining to honor its bills.

59. Ibid., I, 763, 765.

60. Ibid., I, 763.

61. Ibid., I, 764.

62. Ibid., I, 765.

63. Ibid., I, 769.

64. Ibid., I, 770.

65. Ibid., I, 769-770.

66. Ibid., I, 766. “Scuppernong River” and “Scuponung Lake” were across the Sound from Perquimans River, and Great Alligator River and Alligator Lake were across from Pasquotank River (William Byrd's Histories, ed. W. K. Boyd, map facing p. xvi).

67. Colonial Records, I, 850-851, 888.

68. Ibid., II, 117 (1886). At this time, however, he ordered “sugar the best sort” and “a gallon of the best sallet oil” (II, 128).

69. Ibid., II, 247-249.

70. Ibid., II, 417.

71. Ibid., II, 417.

72. Ibid., II, 431-432.

73. Ibid., II, 401. Giles Rainsford informed the Secretary that Urmston, pretending to be lame, suffered chiefly from laziness, and that he spent the Society's money to improve his plantation (ibid., I, 858; II, 17). When it was rumored after Urmston's return to England that he had applied for permission to come back to Carolina, he was declared in an anonymous letter to the Secretary to be wicked and lewd, notorious for swearing and drunkenness; the people disliked him and would not go to hear him (ibid., II, 431).

74. “Journal,” Pennsylvania Magazine, XXXVI, 7.

75. Colonial Records, I, 714.

76. Ibid., I, 771. In illustration of North Carolina marriage, Professor W. K. Boyd remarks that during the proprietary period the legislature “passed a bill to put illegitimate children on a parity with legitimate ones. This was vetoed by the crown.” He cites a nineteenth-century legend “that a certain senator played the fiddle at the marriage of his parents and that a certain governor performed the marriage ceremony at the legal joining of his parents, and that Judge Gaston remarked in a public address that one source of the free negro population was the cohabitation of white women with negro men, and the children of such unions followed the status of the mother” (quoted, with Professor Boyd's kind permission, from a letter).

77. Graffenried's narratives are in Christoph von Graffenried's Account of the Founding of New Bern, ed. V. H. Todd (Raleigh, 1920).

78. Mess biscuit?

79. “Journal of John Barnwell,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, VI, 49, 51, 54-55 (July, 1898).

80. “Diary,” Records of the Moravians, I, 31-34.

81. “A Journall of the Proceedings of Philip Ludwell and Nath^ll Harrison Commissioners Appointed for Seteling ye Limits betwixt Virg^a & Carolina,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, IV, 42 (July, 1896).

82. Colonial Records, I, 767.

83. J. Chetwynd, P. Doeminique, M. Bladen, and E. Ashe, “Representation,” Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, ed. E. B. O'Callaghan, V, 609.

84. Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates (2d ed., London, 1724), pp. 76-87; Colonial Records, index under “Edward Teach.” Teach himself, as Professor W. K. Boyd declares in a letter, was “undoubtedly … in collusion with high officials.”

85. “Diary,” Records of the Moravians, I, 40-41.

86. “Journal of a French Traveller,” American Historical Review, XXVI, 738.

87. Jones, The Present State of Virginia, p. 57.

88. Ludwell, “Journall,” Virginia Magazine, IV, 30-42.

89. That North Carolinians traded illegally with New England vessels, that pork caused “gross humours,” that yaws resulted from lack of salt, that there was no place of public worship in North Carolina in 1728, and that mosquitoes infested Edenton. As Professor W. K. Boyd points out (in a letter), the charge of illegal trading with New England vessels is supported by evidence in the Colonial Records for the decade between 1670 and 1680.

90. W. K. Boyd (Introduction to William Byrd's Histories, p. xi) emphasizes this fact.

91. Concerning the back country see Spangenberg, “Diary,” Records of the Moravians, I, 41; “Journal of a French Traveller,” American Historical Review, XXVI, 738; Adam Gordon, “Journal of an Officer in the West Indies Who Travelled over a Part of the West Indies, and of North America, in the Course of 1764 and 1765,” Travels in the American Colonies, ed. N. D. Mereness (New York, 1916), pp. 399-400; Smyth, Tour, I, 172-183, 210-218, 257-260, 280-284; American Husbandry, I, 341.

92. V. L. Parrington, The Colonial Mind (New York, 1927), pp. 137-140. Professor Parrington draws a schematic distinction between “the Frontier as Lubberland” and “the Frontier as Land of Promise,” the latter being represented by Crèvecoeur's sketches. It may be noted in this connection that Jedidiah Morse quotes Crèvecoeur's remarks on religious indifference and reversion to barbarism among backwoodsmen in general as specially, though not exclusively, applicable to western North Carolina (Geography Made Easy. Being a Short, but Comprehensive System of That Very Useful as Agreeable Science, New Haven [1784], pp. 73-78).

93. New Voyage, pp. 63-64. See also An Account of the Cape Fear Country, 1731, by Hugh Meredith, ed. E. G. Swem (Perth Amboy, N. J., 1922).

94. “A Journal, Interspersed with Observations and Remarks, by Josiah Quincy, Jr.,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XLIX, 462-464 (1916).

95. Natural History, pp. 27-29, 256.

96. Informations concerning the Province of North Carolina, Addressed to Emigrants from the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland (Glasgow, 1773), reprinted in the North Carolina Historical Review, III, 619, 621 (Oct., 1926). Guillaume-Thomas Raynal expresses a less favorable opinion of the Scots, both at home and in North Carolina (Histoire philosophique et politique, des établissemens & du commerce des européens dans les deux Indes, Geneva, 1780, IV, 313-315).

97. The American Geography (2d ed., London, 1792), pp. 417-418. Morse specifies six charges: (1) disregard of the Sabbath; (2) suckling of white infants by black nurses; (3) limitation of male conversation to cards, the bottle, occurrences of the day, negroes, and prices; (4) general mental indolence; (5) small respect for women; and (6) waste of time in drinking, idling, gambling, boxing, gouging (on which he provides a note, p. 418), cock-fighting, and horse-racing.

98. For suggestions incorporated into this paragraph I am greatly obligated to Professor W. K. Boyd, who has provided useful comments on the whole manuscript. I am further obligated, for advice and encouragement, to Professor G. L. Kittredge, of Harvard University.