Roanoke River

“ The Indians in the vicinity of the first English settlement at Roanoke, seeing the Englishmen very desirous of finding two things: gold and the South Sea, told them, with the design of sending them off on a wild-goose chase from which they might never return, that Roanoke River rose in a region full of gold ”

“ Roanne (31) , an old French town in the department of Loire, on the river Loire, 49 m. NW of St. Étienne; has interesting ruins, a college flourishing cotton and hat factories, dye-works, tanneries, &c.
Roanoke (16) , a flourishing city of Virginia, U.S., on the Roanoke River; has rapidly sprung into a busy centre of steel, iron, machinery, tobacco, and other factories. ”

“ ROANOKE, a river of the South Atlantic Slope, U.S.A. With the Staunton, which rises in the Appalachian Valley in south-western Virginia, it constitutes one river, and, flowing in a general south-easterly direction, crosses the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina just above the Fall Line and discharges into Albemarle Sound. ”

“ The instruction gains its chief interest from the suggestion it conveys of a renewed interest on the part of the adventurers [Pg 14] in the area previously explored by Raleigh's men. Perhaps the adventurers anticipated the further disappointments resulting from the additional exploration of the James, and so thought again of the Roanoke River, which Captain Ralph Lane had partly explored in 1585 and 1586 with the hope that it might lead to China. ”

“ We moved down the river along Pamlico Sound, past Roanoke Island up Albermarle Sound to near Elizabeth City and landed on the opposite side of the sound near Camden at just sunrise April 19. We started off into the country. At eleven o’clock we had marched a distance of eighteen miles through the dismal swamp, parts of the way over a corduroy road in a terrific heat. A number of the [Pg 48] boys were sunstruck. E. B. Richardson of our company received a partial sunstroke. At eleven o’clock we struck the Johnnies at a place near South Mills. ”

“ The morning of April 18, 1862, my brigade, then stationed at Roanoke Island, embarked upon the steamer Ocean Wave for an expedition up the Elizabeth River, the object of which was to destroy the locks of the Dismal Swamp canal in order to prevent several imaginary iron-clads from getting into Albemarle Sound. ”

“ They carried one hundred and five men, but no women, and intended to settle at Roanoke Island, where the "lost colony" had disappeared some twenty years before; but they were driven farther north by a storm, and, with no idea of where they were, began hunting for a suitable place for settlement. They sailed into the broad opening of Chesapeake Bay, and were still roving northward when they were pleased with the appearance of a wide river, which flowed into the bay from the mainland on the west. ”

“ Art, in its most delicate operations, never wrought any thing half so wonderful as that little forest, created within the space of an hour, and covering tens of thousands of acres. The road was wretched, and it was almost two hours past meridian when I reached St. Tammany, on the Roanoke, a small post station in Mecklenburg county, about eighty miles from Petersburg, and about thirty below the confluence of the Dan and Staunton. The Roanoke is here almost four hundred yards wide, with an average depth of about thirteen feet, and a strong current. ”

“ Later on, as more settlers came into the valley, quite a village grew up around "Big Lick" and in 1874 it was incorporated with John Trout as Mayor. Then in 1881 the village woke up. Saws and hammers were heard from dawn 'til dusk. The Roanoke Machine Works were being built. Nearby, stores and houses were springing up, warehouses and boarding-houses. Surveyors were laying off lots and laying out streets. Contractors and engineers, artisans and mechanics were coming in every day. The men who sold supplies for all of these were indeed busy. The Norfolk and Western Railroad had come to Roanoke! ”

“ If overblown you cannot seek shelter and smooth water under a weather shore, but must stay outside and bang away at it. To get mixed up in a set of stakes and net is a very pernickety proposition. We had to guess the laneway between nets some 3 miles away from the creek which forms the fisherman’s harbor of Roanoke Marshes. We hit it right and dropped hook to quiet anchorage in midst of a busy settlement of tiny fish shanties. We were at once boarded by the population which made itself thoroughly at home and roosted about watching us cook and eat our supper. ”

“ Sun was nearly set when wind and sea dropped and we again started launch and headed for the harbor, too. This harbor, Roanoke Marshes, is a little creek in back of Roanoke Light and the creek makes into the marshes. Night fell quickly and we were soon cruising along a low, black shore line without sign of light to guide us. No more use than nothing, so after running into numerous fish traps we over yank and called it enough. Our gasoline is running mighty low for we have had no wind since leaving Norfolk. More than 100 miles from here to Beaufort and few if any places to get any. ”

“ William made thirty thousand dollars a year out of his salt business and left a fortune to his many nieces and nephews.
Roanoke is the gateway through which the visitor continues down the famous Valley Pike, Route Eleven. From every curve in the road one sees the beauty of nature. One learns bits of early history from the numerous historic signs along the route—for every footstep of the brave pioneers was bitterly contested from here on.
These first settlers were "a remarkable race of people for intelligence, enterprise and hardy adventure." ”

“ Roanoke Island is the key of six charming estuaries, whose ready navigation by small vessels and light draft steamboats, must needs make them hereafter the seat of a profitable commerce, in cotton, corn, turpentine, rosin, tar, timber, fish, oysters, wood, reeds, cranberries, and grapes. The Roanoke fisheries alone would yield fortunes every year if pursued in a business-like manner. The scuppernong grape, which is a native of North Carolina, if planted in vineyards and cultivated scientifically, might be made to produce, on Roanoke alone, an income of $100,000 annually. ”

“ Friday, January 20, at 1:30 a.m., we came to anchor, and at 8:30 a.m. we got under weigh, and arrived at Roanoke Island at 11:30 a.m.
Saturday, January 21st, 1865, I went ashore at Roanoke Island. The weather is rainy, foggy, and windy. Monday, January 23, at 2 p.m., we got under weigh and proceeded to Plymouth, where we arrived in the evening. The night is dark and foggy. Tuesday, January 24, the Valley City arrived at Edenton, and landed the sisters and cousin of the bride, Acting Master James G. Green and his wife having proceeded from Roanoke Island north, on a short tour. ”

“ Raw-re-noke is an Indian word for money. The city of Roanoke was originally a land grant to Thomas Tosh, an old settler who came to "Big Lick" and settled there after King George II and King George III had granted him sixteen hundred acres of land along that fertile valley. "Big Lick" was a favorite spot for the wild game and for the Indians too, for there they found the salt so necessary to life itself. One of Tosh's daughters married General Andrew Lewis and became the mother of Major Andrew Lewis and Thomas Lewis. ”

“ The chronicler of the voyage declared that he had visited those parts of Europe in which this fruit was most abundant, but that the difference in quantity in favor of Roanoke was quite incredible. The adventurers were also deeply impressed by the magnificence of the trees and the variety of the natural products. The cedars surpassed the cedars of the Azores or the Indies. The oaks were larger in girth and of a greater height than the English oaks. Fields of flax were found in many places. ”

“ In the mountainous parts, and to the west of the mountains, the soil is moist and fertile. On the banks of some of the rivers, particularly the Roanoke, it is remarkably rich. It has been estimated that there are two millions five hundred thousand acres of swampy land within the state, capable of being drained at a trifling cost, and adapted to the purposes of agriculture. ”

“ Araminta was far too clever to choose too deep solitude for her lodge in a vast wilderness. She needs people and she surely has them.
“Roanoke is the most progressive city in Virginia—a bustling, busy, modern city, with no distinct flavor of the old régime in its business life. All sorts of progressive people are there. ”

“ Only a flood may move the boulders farther downstream. However, the current carries fine material far downstream to deposit it in lakes, in Puget Sound, or in the Pacific Ocean. 29 The Puyallup River, for example, is still very muddy where it enters Puget Sound at Tacoma, more than 40 miles from its source in the glaciers on Mount Rainier. ”

“ Murphy, and to which he obtained the approbation of Mr. Fulton, after the improvement of inlets at Nag's Head (if practicable) , Ocracoke, Beaufort, Swansborough, and Wilmington, consisted in opening for batteau navigation the rivers Roanoke, Tar, Neuse, Cape Fear, Yadkin, Catawba, Broad, and sundry tributaries, and by canals to join the Roanoke and Tar or Pamlico, and Neuse, so as to ship the productions of the country watered by each of them from Beaufort ”

“ There was enacted the tragedy of American colonization, the disappearance of Raleigh's Lost Colony, and there the sacrament of baptism was first administered in the United States. Roanoak Island is a beautiful place, with fertile soil and wild luxuriance of vine-covered forests which are enveloped in a deep solitude which has become dignity. Restless waters ebb and flow by its side, restless winds kiss its bare sand dunes, a genial sun brings to maturity its wealth of tree and vine and shrub. ”

“ Indeed few rivers of equal size, are bordered with as wide and fertile levels of this formation of earth, as those which water that section of country: the Roanoke particularly affords large bodies of it, capable of producing in great abundance hemp, tobacco and the different kinds of grain usually grown. In the country generally, every species of vegetable, to which the climate was congenial, grew with great luxuriancy ”

“ Regulation works were preferred on the Rhone to canalization from Lyons nearly to its outlet, in spite of its large fall, which reaches in some places 1 in 250, on account of the considerable quantities of shingle and gravel carried down by the river; the comparative regularity of the discharge, owing to the flow being derived from tributaries having their floods at different times of the year, has aided the effects of the works, which have produced an increase of about 32/3 ft. in the available navigable depth below Lyons at the lowest water-level. ”

“ Raleigh is said to have sent three several times to ascertain their fate, but without any success. In some of the memoirs of the later Virginia settlements, which have recently been printed, there are references to persons said to have been recovered from Raleigh's colony on Roanoke, but they are indirect, and only show that tradition was busy with their fate. There can be no doubt every soul perished on this isolated coast.
The ancient history of Roanoke closed with the departure of Raleigh's last ship, and the natives resumed possession of their favorite spots. ”

“ The topography consists of a gently rolling to nearly level plain, and there are no steep slopes or rough areas. Drainage in this type is excellent, the easy slopes allowing a gradual flow of water from the surface without undue erosion, except with very heavy rains on the steeper slopes. The loamy subsoil allows a ready but not too rapid percolation of surplus soil moisture, and never gets soggy or in a cold, sour condition. Numerous small streams extend throughout the area of this type, allowing a rapid removal of all surplus water into the Potomac River, the chief drainageway of the County. ”

“ The rivers of the third system are the Chowan, the Roanoke, the Tar, the Neuse and the Cape Fear, usually navigable some for fifty and others to near one hundred miles for boats of light draught. Of these the three last have their rise near the northern boundary of the State, in a comparatively small area, near the eastern source of the Yadkin. The Chowan has its rise in Virginia, below Appomattox Court House. The principal sources of the Roanoke, also, are in Virginia, in the Blue Ridge, though some of its head streams are in North Carolina, and very near those of the Yadkin. ”

“ Others say that the fish-ways were not properly constructed. Perchance, after a few thousands of years, if the fishes will be patient, and pass their summers elsewhere, meanwhile, nature will have levelled the Billerica dam, and the Lowell factories, and the Grass-ground River run clear again, to be explored by new migratory shoals, even as far as the Hopkinton pond and Westborough swamp. ”

“ It forms two horseshoes and an ox-bow connected, as we see it from our windows; and when the tide is out diminishes to a rivulet about two feet in width. At flood it is more than twice the width of the Wissahickon, and when the high tides of August come its magnitude is surprising.
Then we understand why the hay-ricks (which we wickedly tell our friends from the "Hub" resemble gigantic loaves of Boston brown bread) are on stilts, for, regardless of dikes or boundaries, this tortuous creek spreads over its whole valley, as if in emulation of the greater river of which it is a tributary. ”