10. What is said of the Israelites? 11. What new enterprise was inaugurated in 1878? What have been the results of the hatchery? What fact has been proven concerning fish? 12. What is said of the improvement in the means of catching fish? 13. What other species of trade is found in the eastern counties? 14. What is said of the production of peanuts? 15. Can you tell something of the growth and trade of Wilmington? 16. How has the navigation of the Cape Fear River been improved? 17. What other seaport city is now mentioned? What is said of its commercial interests? CHAPTER LXXII. THE RAILROADS AND NEW TOWNS. A. D. 1879. 1879. The Raleigh & Gaston Railroad originally connected the two places that gave name to the route. It was necessary in reaching Raleigh from the Albemarle region to go to Weldon, and then, by the Petersburg Railroad, the junction in Greenville county, Virginia, gave access by a short line to Gaston. It was not until about 1853 that the Raleigh & Gaston route was extended directly down the Roanoke River to Weldon. This was a great facility to both trade and travel on this important line, yet twenty years elapsed in the progress of internal communication before this short link could be added. 2. A great trunk line, extending east and west through the whole length of the State, has long been a favorite scheme of many statesmen in the effort to build up a seaport at Beaufort. But in the progress of the late war it became all-important to the Confederate government to tap the North Carolina Road at Greensboro, in order that troops and military freights might be speedily conveyed to Petersburg and Richmond by way of Danville. 3. The completion of the lines leading from Charlotte to Wilmington, from Charlotte to Statesville, from Raleigh to Hamlet, the Cape Fear & Yadkin Valley from Fayetteville to Greensboro; and the Western North Carolina Road from Salisbury to Asheville, and the Paint Rock branch, have enormously increased the facilities for travel in the State. In addition to these lines, new routes from Jamesville to Washington, from Rocky Mount to Tarboro, from Norfolk to Elizabeth City and Edenton, from Durham to Chapel Hill, from Henderson to Oxford, from Goldsboro to Smithfield, have also been recently added to the railway system. 4. The road from Winston to Greensboro has resulted in the creation of a city alongside of ancient Salem which is, in every respect the compeer of Durham in the swiftness of its growth and the amount of its trade and manufactures. Winston, Durham and Reidsville have arisen almost like magic, and are expanding into such importance that Charlotte, Salisbury and Greensboro have all felt the consequences of their growth in trade and population.