Sketches of Lower Carolina . . .
By EDMl.M) mm\
Oddities of
Our Waters
Here are more e.x trails from "Sketches
of Lower Carolina." published in I860.
Others will follow.
The rise and fall of the occan-tidc
on the coast of North Carolina, is very
small. The accurate observations of the
U. S. Coast-Survey, make the mean
tide at Hattcras inlet, only two feet,
and of spring tides, (showing ex¬
tremes at full moon.) only 2.2. Yet.
when Currituck inlet was open, the
tides, low as they are in the ocean,
rose regularly through all Albemarle
sound. Colonel W. Byrd, in his ac¬
count of the running of the "Dividing
Line." in 1728, stated that the tide
then rose as far as seven or eight
miles up the Chowan river. (NVestover
Manuscript, pp. 12 and 13 of the
printed work). But now. notwithstand¬
ing the existing inlets and entrances
of ocean water into the sounds, there
is no rise of tide in Albemarle sound.
THE STATE. January 26. 1957
The actual changes of elevation of
the water, (in common parlance called
"high" or "low tides.") have no peri¬
odicity. or regularity of return, and
arc caused mainly by the prevalence
of winds, from different quarters —
and in less degree, and more rarely,
by temporary floods in the great rivers,
and their subsequent subsidence.
From these causes, there are ir¬
regular and considerable alternations
of height and depression of the water
— and sometimes, though rarely, as
much as three feet or more between
the extremes of highest and lowest sur¬
faces. Hut generally there is but little
variation of height — yet enough to
make a narrow and clean sand-beach
along the shores of the sounds and
the broad estuaries of the rivers.
liven in Pamlico sound, where the
more free ingress of sea-water keeps
all the sound salt, the regular ocean
tides do not reach to. or affect the
water on the more remote shores of the
main land. Or the tidal movement and
changes arc so small, as to be scarcely
appreciable. Near Mattamuskeet Lake.
Here it on artificial inlet, cut through the Bonht neor Corolino Beoch.
I heard some old residents who main¬
tained the existence of regular tides in
the neighboring salt water of the
sound. Yet another person, who had
lived for thirty years near to the edge
of the salt water, declared that there
was no regular, or appreciable, changes
of tide. Of course heavy winds from
the east, which would cause unusual
height of water on the sea-coast, and
a proportionable increase of height
of the ocean tides driven into the inlets,
will cause a considerable but tempo¬
rary rise of the surface of all Pamlico,
and also of the more distant sounds.
The damming (by sand-drift) of the
former inlets, by preventing the former
free egress of the interior waters, must
have served to raise the ordinary height
of Albemarle sound higher than the
level of the former tide at high flood
— or say something more than two feet
above tide-water. The marshes, about
the junction of the Chowan and the
Roanoke with the sound, and else¬
where. offer evidence of this perma¬
nently. yet recent increased height of
the water, in their very low level, com¬
pared to the water, and to other tide
marshes.
The broad waters of the sounds, are
usually smooth, and offer very striking
and beautiful prospects. The mere
statements of distances made above
would scarcely impress a reader with
the extent of space offered to the eye
At Currituck Court Mouse (on Curri¬
tuck sound.) and also at Stevenson’s
Point, the extremity of Durant's neck,
in Perquimans county, land could be
seen only directly across the sounds
Looking both above and below, at both
places, the sight stretched to a horizon
of water only, as when far out on
the ocean. And when sailing on the
broader Pamlico sound, it was seldom
