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WILMINGTON
"THE FREE TOWN ON THE CAPE FEAR"
By JOSEPH BLOUNT CHESHIRE
North Carolina might be called the
State without a city—civitas sine urbe.
It has never had a capital or a metropolis, except
arbitrarily and in name only. It has been
a rural State, a State of planters and farmers.
Its eminent lawyers, and even its physicians
and merchants, have often been also its eminent
farmers. The first president of the State
Agricultural Society was the Chief Justice of
its Supreme Court.
The physical conditions of a country predetermine the lines of its development. North Carolina's interminable length of dangerous coast-line repelled the earliest attempt at English settlement. Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition of 1585, coasting along its inhospitable sands, divined their true character, and
