prisoners and spoil taken from the English, to give hostages, and to take active steps towards punishing and reducing those tribes with whom they had been lately in alliance. One remnant of the Tuscaroras stayed in the neighborhood of Roanoke, the rest wandered northward and were absorbed into the confederacy of the Five Nations.2 For many years afterward North Carolina enjoyed peace, and the memory of her one Indian war was only kept alive by the institution of a solemn fast on the anniversary of the massacre.3

Records of

in North

Two years later we meet with the first recorded specimen of North Carolina legislation since the days of Stephens. Unluckily, the only portions of it which survive are those which legislation bear on religious and ecclesiastical affairs, and on the Carolina. kindred subject of moral discipline. The Church of England was for the first time established by law and nine parishes laid out. At the same time liberty of conscience was granted to Dissenters, and as in England, an affirmation was accepted from Quakers instead of an oath. Drunkenness, incontinence, and Sabbath-breaking were all made penal. Legislation of this kind tells us but little of the temper and character of a community. It may either represent the common and natural feeling of society, or it may be a violent protest against practical abuses. All that we read of the social life of North Carolina would incline us to the latter view.

General condition of the

In 1720 the first event occurred which throws any clear light from without on the internal life of the colony. In that year boundary disputes arose between Virginia and her southern neighbor and it was found necessary to appoint representatives on each side to settle the boundary line. The chief interest of the matter lies in the notes left to us by one of the Virginian Commissioners. Colonel William Byrd was colony. a rich planter, whose multifold activities and varied accomplishments recall that generation of Englishmen to which Virginia owed her origin. Educated in England, then called to the bar and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, afterwards for thirty-seven years a Councilor in Virginia, three times agent at the English court, and the leading spirit in every industrial enter

1 Williamson publishes this treaty, vol. i. p. 202. Trott's Ecclesiastical Laws, p. 96.

2 lb., vol. i. p. 203. 4 lb., p. 83.

The following account is taken from Byrd's History of the Dividing Line, published in 1841, with Byrd's other writings, under the title of the Westover MS. Mr. Tyler describes them (vol. ii. p. 272) and gives a sketch of Byrd's career.

BYRD'S ACCOUNT OF NORTH CAROLINA.

349 prise, Byrd shows us how active and brilliant a career lay open to a great Virginian landholder. His description of North Carolina must be taken with some deductions. Its counterpart is to be found in those accounts of Highland life given by English travelers in the seventeenth century, from which historians have drawn an exaggerated picture of squalor and misery. Byrd, unquestionably, was a man to appreciate keenly the contrast between the habits in which he had been trained and the sordid life of a squatter in North Carolina, nor was he likely to resist the temptation by throwing his comments into a pungent and telling form. Yet, after making all such deductions and checking Byrd's report of that of graver writers, there remains a picture of poverty, indolence and thriftlessness, which finds no counterpart ir any of the other southern colonies. That the chief town only contained some fifty poor cottages is little or nothing more than what we find in Maryland or Virginia. But there the import trade with England made up for the deficiencies of colonial life. North Carolina, lacking the two essentials of trade, harbors and a surplus population, had no commercial dealings with the mother country. Strings of pack-horses brought furs from the Catawba Indians, to be reshipped in small New England vessels or again carried overland to Virginia. The only possessions which abounded were horses and swine, both of which could be reared in droves without any care or attention. The abundance of horses, indeed, was an evil, since it encouraged the slothfulness of the settlers and withheld them from exploring those districts which could only be reached on foot. The country was well fitted for horned cattle, but that resource was wasted, as the management of a dairy was beyond the skill of a North Carolina housewife. Even hunting seems to have been but little practiced, and the colonists were content to live almost wholly on pork, to the great injury of their health.

The evils of slavery existed without its counter-balancing advantages. There was nothing to teach those habits of administration which the rich planters of Virginia and South Carolina learned as part of their daily life. At the same time the colony suffered from one of the worst effects of slavery, a want of manual skill. Carolina tar might have undersold that of Scandinavia in the English market, had there been sufficient intelligence and industry to insure good packing.1

1 Williamson, vol. ii. p. 213.

The political state of the colony is told in language which recalls the medieval description of Northern Italy when

De tributo Cæsaris nemo cogitabat,

Omnes erant Cæsares, nemo censum dabat.

The protection which the law granted to alien debtors was in itself a guaranty for the presence of a worthless population.

Religious authority fared no better than civil. Edenton enjoyed, according to Byrd, the evil pre-eminence of being the one capital in the world without any place of worship.

During all this time the influence and authority of the Proprietors was but a dead letter. All idea of enforcing the FundaExtinction mental Constitutions had long been abandoned. The

of the Proprie

tary government.

constitution of the colony was assimilated to that of its neighbors. The Governor and five of the Council were nominated by the Proprietors, the remaining five by the representatives of the people. The lower house was elected by precincts, of which there were originally four, each returning five members. New precincts were added, each of which returned two, a difference which gave rise to more than one dispute.1 In 1729 the faint and meaningless shadow of proprietary government came to an end.2 The crown bought up first the shares of seven Proprietors, then after an interval that of the eighth. the case of other colonies the process of transfer had been effected by a conflict and by something approaching to revolution. In North Carolina alone it seems to have come about with the peaceful assent of all parties. To the Proprietors it was a distinct financial gain. To the crown it was advantageous as a measure of administration, especially in dealing with smugglers. For the colonists themselves the proprietary government had done nothing which was likely to win their loyalty or gratitude. Thus, without a struggle, North Carolina cast off all traces of its peculiar origin and passed into the ordinary state of a crown colony.

We must now return to the more populous and far more prosperous colony south of Cape Fear. The first attempt of the The settle- Proprietors in that direction was made at about the Cape Fear. Same time and in the same fashion as that at Albemarle. Instead of relying on the resources and surplus popula

ment at

1 Williamson, vol. i. p. 163; vol. ii. p. 57. Compare the Proprietors' instructions to Harvey, President of the Council, 1679, February 5.

2 Williamson, vol. ii. p. 25. The ease with which the transfer was effected is shown by the slight traces left in contemporary documents.

THE SETTLEMENT AT CAPE FEAR.

351 tion of the mother country, the Proprietors aimed at peopling their territories from the overflow of the other colonies. As Vir ginia was to be the parent of North Carolina, so was Barbadoes to furnish the Southern colony. In each case the Proprietors were not so much establishing a colony of their own as taking advantage of an impulse which drove a body of independent settlers towards their territory.

2

In August, 1663, a number of rich planters in Barbadoes proposed to purchase a tract of land in Carolina from the Proprietors, on condition that they were allowed to form an independent community with legislative powers.1 The details of their procedure are very obscure, and we must be content with isolated facts which enable us to trace the general course which the progress of the colony took. In January, 1665, the Proprietors granted to Sir John Yeamans, an old Cavalier settled in Barbadoes, a commission investing him with powers closely resembling those given to Stephens. The most noteworthy feature in his instructions is a clause bidding him do his utmost to encourage immigration from New England, whence the chief stock of settlers might be expected. The spot chosen for the settlement was Cape Fear, or, as some more euphemistically called it, Cape Fair, a promontory a hundred and sixty miles southwest of Albemarle. The colony began prosperously, and within a year of its first settlement numbered eight hundred inhabitants.* Then we suddenly lose sight of it. Yeamans was afterwards promoted to the Governorship of the more important settlement on Ashley River, and it is probable that his personal influence brought about the gradual and informal amalgamation of the two settlements. The only lasting effect of the colony at Cape Fear was to imbue the settlers of Carolina with the habits and traditions of Barbadoes, and thus to further the process which made South Carolina prominent among the Southern colonies as the stronghold of slavery.

While the settlements at Albemarle and Cape Fear were struggling on, neglected and obscure, the energies of the Proprietors were finding full scope elsewhere. In all their proceedings which we have at present

Sandford's voyage.

1 Colonial Entry Book, No. xx. p. 10.

followed, the Pro

2 lb., pp. 20-22.

It is first formally called Cape Fear in the proposal of the Barbadoes planters, above referred to. In Yeamans's instructions it is called Cape Fair.

4 This is stated in The Brief Description of Carolina, 1666. The writer, however, antedates the colony by a year. The official documents above referred to leave no doubt as to the

true date.

prietors were only playing the part of landholders with a territory occupied and cultivated by tenants living and working after their own fashion. Now, for the first time, we see them entering on the task of colonization with a persistency and a disregard of outlay which recalls the early days of the Virginia Company. In June, 1666, they sent forth their secretary, Robert Sandford, on a voyage of discovery.1 His adventures, told by himself with great fullness and graphic simplicity, recall the days of Amidas and Gosnold. After narrowly escaping shipwreck, he explored the coast from Albemarle to Port Royal and followed the course of a river, probably the Pedee, for thirty miles inland, delighted with the kindness of the Indians and the richness of the country. Foremost in the work of exploration was a friend of Shaftesbury, Dr. Woodward, whose name appears more than once in the annals of the colony. The discoverers found traces of the Spaniards, afterwards such dangerous neighbors to Carolina, in a cross erected in an Indian village, but no longer remembered as an object of worship. The homeward, like the outward voyage, was beset by dangers. The fleet of three vessels touched at Cape Fear. There they found the colony in such distress that it was deemed necessary to dispatch one vessel to New England to procure food. In place of this ship Sandford hired a Barbadoes merchantman. Of what follows he tells us enough to excite our curiosity without satisfying it. The captain, he says, went mad and threw himself overboard, and the ship returned to Charles River "under the much more quiet and constant, but little more knowing and prudent, conduct of a child."

The Proprietors now determined to establish a colony near the mouth of the river explored by Sandford. The settlement was

colony.

Project of a to be composed of a number of emigrants from Engsouthern land reinforced by others from Ireland, and possibly from Barbadoes and the Bermudas. The government was entrusted to a planter from the last-named colony, William Sayle, a Puritan and a Nonconformist, whose religious bigotry, advanced age, and failing health all promised badly for his discharge of the task before him. His deficiencies were fortunately supplemented

1 Sandford's account of his voyage occupies thirty-two pages of MS. in the Shaftesbury Papers.

2 Sayle's own letters show more piety than ability. Yeamans, writing to the Proprietors, November 15, 1670, describes him as a man of no great sufficiency. West says that he was

'very aged, and hath much lost himself in his government"; and another settler, writing from Carolina, plainly calls him "ancient and crazed."