Cape Fear River

    The account of John and Rena's journey down the Cape Fear on the steamship, "the Old North State," provides another interesting glimpse into the life of "old Fayetteville." A little over a century ago, steamship travel was still a principle means of transportation to and from Fayetteville. Chesnutt had himself taken the steamship journey from Fayetteville to Wilmington on several occasions. (His uncle Dallas worked on a steamship.) Chesnutt helps us to visualize what such a journey was like:

The journey down the sluggish river to the seaboard in the flat-bottomed, stern-wheel steamer lasted all day and most of the night. During the first half-day, the boat grounded now and then upon a sand bank, and the half-naked Negro dock hands toiled with ropes and poles to release it. Several times before Rena fell asleep that night, the steamer would tie up at a landing, and by the light of huge pine torches she watched the boat hands send the yellow turpentine barrels down the steep bank in a long string, or pass cord-wood on board from hand to hand. The excited Negroes, their white teeth and eyeballs glistening in the surrounding darkness to which their faces formed no relief; the white officers in brown linen, shouting, swearing, and gesticulating; the yellow, flickering torchlight over all -- made up a scene of which the weird interest would have appealed to a more blasé traveler than this girl upon her first journey. (39)

    Chesnutt was aware that because of Fayetteville's proximity to the Cape Fear River, the area was subject to floods. Perhaps Chesnutt heard of the "freshets," as floods were referred to, of 1826, 1846, and 1865, the last of which coincided with Sherman's march through the region. When Molly Walden recounts recent events in Patesville in a letter to Rena in The House Behind the Cedars, she writes, "There has been a big freshet in the rivers, and it looked at one time as if the new bridge would be washed away." (94)

    While Chesnutt describes a steamship journey, he also makes reference to the plank roads which crossed the state in the last century as well as the opening of the railroads to Fayetteville. Of Rena's Fayetteville, Chesnutt writes, "Since she had come away from the town, a railroad had been opened by which the long river voyage might be avoided and, making allowance for slow trains and regular connections, Patesville could be reached an all-rail route in about twelve hours." (85)

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