against the dark background of lofty
pines brightened the winter landscape. The opulent Southern spring flung
wide the white banners of dogwood, enriched the forest aisles with
fretted gold of jessamine and scarlet of coral honeysuckle, and spread
the ground with carpet of velvet moss, of rosy azaleas and blue-eyed
innocents. The wide rivers that flow in placid beauty by the wooded
banks of ancient Wikacome, formed a highway for the commerce of the
settlers and a connecting link with the outer sea. And however fierce
and bold the wild creatures of those dark forests might be, the teeming
fish and game of the surrounding woods and waters kept far from the
settlers' doors the wolf of want and hunger.

The fame of this fertile spot spread, and ere long George Durant was
greeting many newcomers into the country. Samuel Pricklove had preceded
him into Wikacome, and later came George Catchmaid, Captain John
Hecklefield and Richard Sanderson, while later still the Blounts, the
Whedbees, the Newbys, Harveys and Skinners, names still prominent in
Albemarle, came into the neighborhood and settled throughout Perquimans
County.

At the homes of the planters on Durant's Neck the public business of the
Albemarle Colony was for many years transacted. Courts were held,
councils convened, and assemblies called, while from the wharves of the
planters on Little River and the Perquimans, white-sailed vessels
carried the produce of the rich fields and dense forests to New England,
to the West Indies and to the mother country.

Many of the most interesting events in the early history of Albemarle
occurred on Durant's Neck. The Culpeper Rebellion, of which George
Durant and John Culpeper were among the leaders, began in Pasquotank,
but reached its culmination in Durant's home on Little River. There,
also, Thomas Miller was imprisoned for a time, and there the leaders of
the rebellion organized a new people's government, the first in the New
World absolutely independent of Proprietors, Parliament and King. At
Hecklefield's home on Little River, the plantation adjoining Durant's,
the Assembly of 1708 met to investigate the Cary-Glover question and to
decide which of those two claimants to the gubernatorial chair had
rightful authority to occupy that exalted seat. There also George Eden
was sworn in as ruler of North Carolina under the Proprietors; and there
the death of Queen Anne was announced to the Governor's Council, and
George I was fo