country, built his famous "Palace" there, in which he and his wife sat while receiving their company, with an assumption of royal state which offended the pride of the Colonial gentry, who did not lack a sense of their own dignity.
Into the Cape Fear River adventurers from New England had come as early as 1661, and had begun the raising of cattle on the abundant natural pasturage of the country. They soon abandoned the enterprise, driven off, it is said, by the Indians, whose children they had sent to be sold for slaves in New England.
In 1665, Sir John Yeamans, a wealthy planter of Barbadoes, brought in a colony from that island, and began a settlement at "Old Town," eight miles below the site of Wilmington. This was also abandoned after a few years, Yeamans going back to Barbadoes, and the settlers going either north to the Albemarle section, or south to the new city Charleston, at the confluence of the Ashley and the Cooper Rivers.
At the end of the proprietary period the whole of what was known as Clarendon County had only about five hundred white inhabitants. In spite of its noble river and fertile lowlands it had a bad name. Two
