Save for the fields of corn and cotton that lie along its banks, and an occasional sawmill whose whirring wheels break at long intervals the silence of its wooded shores, the peaceful river through the greater part of its way is undisturbed by signs of man's presence. Only twice in its course do its banks resound to the hum of town and village life, once when shortly emerging from the Great Swamp, the river in its winding flows by the sleepy little Quaker village of Belvidere; and again when its tranquility is suddenly broken by the stir and bustle of mill and factory, upon whose existence depends the prosperity of the old colonial town of Hertford. There, the river, suddenly as wide awake as the beautiful town by which it flows, changes its narrow, tortuous, leisurely course, and broadening out from a slender stream, sweeps on to the sea, a river grown, whose shores from this point on lie apart from each other a distance of more than a mile. Of all the streams that flow down to the sea from Albemarle, none exceeds in beauty or historic interest the lovely Perquimans River. On its eastern banks lies Durant's Neck, the home of George Durant, the first settler in our State, who in 1661 left his Virginia home and came into Albemarle; and being well pleased with the beauty and fertility of fair Wikacome, was content to abide thenceforth in that favored spot. On the banks of the streams flowing on either side of Wikacome, roamed an Indian tribe, the Yeopims, whose great chief Kilcokonen gave to George Durant the first deed for land ever recorded in our State. Durant, his friend and comrade, Samuel Pricklove, and their families and servants, proved to be the vanguard of a long procession of settlers, who, following the footsteps of these first pioneers, made their homes upon the shores of the Albemarle streams. Soon the dense forests that stretched down to the river brinks fell beneath the axe of these home-seekers, and small farms and great plantations fringed the borders of the streams. At the narrows of the Perquimans, where the waters widen into a broad, majestic river, a sturdy pioneer, Henry Phillips (or Phelps) had built his home. Thither in the spring of 1672, came a missionary, William Edmundson, a friend and follower of George Fox, who some years before had over in England founded the Society of Friends. Henry Phelps was a member of this Society also, and the meeting between the two godly men was a joyful one. During the ten years that had passed since the Indian Chief had signed his first grant of land to the white man, the settlers of Albemarle had had no opportunity of assembling together for public worship. Phelps, knowing how gladly the call would be answered, at the bidding of Edmundson, summoned such of his friends and neighbors as he could reach, to his home, to hear the Word preached by this zealous man of God.