Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 2.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

Pamlico Sound penetrates into the low lands of North Carolina westward by means of two deep estuaries, which are in their turn cut up into numberless small creeks. At the north, that of Tar River takes, from the village of Washington, the name of Pamlico River; at the south that of Neuse River retains the name of this water-course, forming the anchoring-ground of the small town of Newberne, built on its right bank. The tide is sufficiently strong both in the Tar and Neuse to carry vessels of considerable draught far beyond the mouths of those rivers, thus enabling gun-boats to penetrate into the very interior of the State. The river waters which flow into Albemarle Sound also form a certain number of deep inlets on the northern shore of this interior basin, the most important of which are the North River, eastward, the Chowan River, to the west, and the Pasquotank River, between the two. On the borders of the last-mentioned bay, into which the Great Dismal Swamp discharges its waters, stands the little town called Elizabeth City. The western extremity of Albemarle Sound terminates at the entrance of the important river of Roanoke, which, descending from the Alleghanies, where it takes its rise, runs along the boundary-line of the States of Virginia and North Carolina, and on the borders of which are successively to be met the villages of Weldon, Hamilton, Williamston and Plymouth. Albemarle Sound extends northward, between the mainland and the sand-bank by which it is bounded, almost as far as Cape Henry, in Virginia, at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay, under the name of Currituck Sound; but this arm of the sea does not communicate with the ocean, which can only be reached through Pamlico and the Strait of Croatan. The strip of land bordering on Pamlico Sound, as we have stated elsewhere, presents but four navigable passage-ways for vessels— New Inlet, Hatteras Inlet, where the forts were situated, Ocracoke Inlet, and lastly Old Topsail Inlet. This last inlet, situated near an angle formed by the sand-bank known to sailors as Cape Lookout, only communicates with the inland sea through a kind of narrow lagoon, which stretches southward, as Currituck Sound extends northward. It was nevertheless the inlet