“A VISIT TO ALBEMARLE SOUND.*
...Sixty or seventy men are usually kept in employ. Two large bateaux† are sent out from the beach, containing each fifteen or sixteen men, to shoot the seine or net, which is usually about a mile in length. After going, side by side, to some distance from the shore, the seine is divided; half being placed in one boat, and half in the other. They then separate, and glance off in opposite directions, to shoot or drop the seine, and slowly return to the beach. Two hours are allowed to pass; and then the men on the shore commence drawing in the seine, by means of four capstans. A capstan is a kind of windlass. Four horses are attached to each, being made to wind up a rope, by walking round a post firmly fixed in the sand.

The process of dropping the seine is a very picturesque one, and its effect is increased by a custom, the boatmen have, of singing a wild and beautiful chant, as they go off. Now, the rest stop, and one sings a solo; and again, they all join in chorus. The captain stands at the prow, and gives his directions for their course. The rustic song is softened into melody, as it floats over the waters, and mingles, as the bateaux recede, with the dreamy dash of waves along the shore. Does it not remind you of “Tasso's echoes,” over the lagunes of Venice, when, of old, beneath the Italian moon, the gondoliers used to sing alternate stanzas, from the poem of the bard of Jerusalem?

* On the coast of North Carolina
† The French name for boat. Particularly applied to large, light, flat-bottomed boats.”
[Rambles about the Country, Ellet, 1854]
Elizabeth F. Ellet (1818 – 1877)