During the war between the States, Wilmington was specially noted as the centre of the important intercourse between the Confederate States and foreign countries by means of the “blockade-runners.” A hundred steamers are said to have been engaged in this traffic between Wilmington and the West Indies, and for many miles north and south of the inlets into the Cape Fear, the beach is still marked by the wrecks of those run ashore to escape the blockading squadron. Some of them, however, ran almost with the regularity of mail-boats, and one steamer is said to have made over fifty successful trips. By these vessels supplies of all kinds and munitions of war were brought in, and large fortunes made by the owners and commanders of the successful steamers. The State of North Carolina owned one of the most fortunate and famous of these, the _Advance_, which eluded capture and continued year after year to bring in shoes, blankets and clothing for the North Carolina soldiers in the Confederate army, and cotton-cards for the women at home, until a few months before Lee’s surrender. Even on her last fatal voyage she had skilfully slipped between the blockading vessels under cover of the darkness, and before day dawned she was well below the horizon on her way to Nassau. But, unhappily, she had been obliged to take in at Wilmington a quantity of coal mined in Chatham County, and not suitable for her use, and a thick trail of smoke settling down over the quiet sea betrayed her. The blockading steamers gave chase and ran her down by her trail, the inferior quality of her coal making it impossible for her to attain her proper speed. Wilmington is still the largest town and the most important port of entry in the State. Its population, like that of the State at large, has been but little diluted by foreign immigration. It retains its traditions of culture, of hospitality, of loyalty to the Anglo-Saxon heritage of freedom and independence, and is as ready now as ever it was in the past to resist the aggressions of power. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHARLESTON BY YATES SNOWDEN “In Pompeii, the tourist, looking from blank wall to dusty floor, wonders what there is to see in that little hall, but a native goes down upon his hands and knees; with a few brisk passes of his hand the sand is brushed away, and a Numidian lion glares forth from the tesselated pavement.”--VIRGINIUS DABNEY’S _Don Miff_. Forty-five years before the English colonization of Virginia, fifty-two before the Dutch settlement of New York and fifty-eight before the Puritans landed at Massachusetts Bay, Captain Jean Ribaut, of Dieppe, commanding the first Huguenot emigration to North America, on the 1st of May, 1562, entered the beautiful harbor of Port Royal, South Carolina.