University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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Cl ' ip l Rill and X s Vicinity. THE SITE of the University was once called New Hope Chapel Hill. It was nearly all densely covered with forest, a favorite with hunters, who had their deer stands along the paths leading between the valleys of the creeks to the nort and south of the ridge. The road from Petersburg and that from Newbern crossed one another somewhere in or near Mrs. Graves ' garden. In the northeast corner of the cross was a chapel of the Church of England, attached to St. Matthew ' s Church, Hillsborough. The minister, Parson Micklejohn, adhered to the British in the Revolutionary War, and hence the chapel, losing its preacher, went to decay and ruin. The wife of Rev. Dr. James Phillips remembered seeing some of the fragments strewing the ground in 1826. The Trustees of the University, in 1793, established a village out of the lands donated to them, and called it after the second half of the original name. The hill is an upheaval of granite belonging to the Laurentian system, i. c, the system of rocks about the River St. Lawrence, or St. Laurentius. It is a part of the coast line of a primeval arm of the ocean, some 250 feet lower than the country west of it. This arm is here sixteen miles wide ; the eastern coast is lower than the western. In the course of time the bottom was elevated by some subterranean force and became dry land. Durham is situate on this ancient sea bottom. The rains falling on the Chap el Hill plateau run off by numerous brooks into two creeks, that on the north being Bowlin ' s, and that on the south, Morgin ' s Creek. These brooks and creeks have cut up the land into deep and sinuous ravines, and, therefore, there is a vast wealth of lovely flowers, gray crags, noble trees, graceful curves of hills, and beautiful, diversified scenery. PiNEY Prospect. — The village is about a mile from the primeval sea. The eastern extremity of the ridge on which it is situate is like a promontory, overhanging the sea. It was by General Davie, the father of the University, called Point Prospect. In old times point was pronounced pint, and hence, the neighbors, seeing on its summit some lofty pines, changed the name to Piney Prospect. From this summit is one of the loveliest views east of the Blue Ridge. In the distance can be seen the steeples and chimneys of Durham, the lofty 14

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trees near Apex and Cary, while the smoke of the locomotives on the North Carolina and Raleigh and Augusta Air Line Railroads, curls gracefully in their tracks. Raleigh is about 200 feet lower than the eastern coast of the water- less sea, and is, therefore, invisible, but whenever sky-scraping rockets are sent up by its jovial citizens, their flame plainly flashes above the horizon. The wave of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men scattered at inter- vals, in the wide expanse below the observer, remind him of Byron ' s Dream. On the crown of Piney Prospect Hill, within a circular area, is a round rock which is the mythical tomb of Dromgoole, who, disappearing from the University and having never been heard of afterward, legend hath it, was killed in a duel and buried underneath. About a hundred yards to the north is a stone block in the shape of a chair, just large enough for two, called the Lovers ' Chair. To the south, following a winding path which leads by the Rifle Pit dug; by Wheeler ' s Cavalry as they retreated before Kilpatrick ' s pursuing column, then going down the hill and crossing the Raleigh Road, the walker comes to Miss Fannie ' s Spring, by whose brink, according to Hamberlin ' s beautiful poem, Dromgoole and his ladylove of that name, often sat discoursing sweet nothings. Afterward, wailing his tragic death, she frequented the spot until she joined him in the spirit land. About a mile toward the northeast from Pinev Prospect, on what was evidently an islet in the ancient sea, is a copse of woods on a hillside. Near its center is a cluster of massive rocks, and in their midst is a rude chamber, closed on three sides and partially covered overhead by the beetling cliff . In this dismal retreat a runaway slave, named Tom Morgan, lay hidden for many months, emerging at night to subsist by robbery. Such terrorwas caused by his depredations that a force of men, armed with shot-guns, scoured the forest and succeeded in finding his hiding-place and capturing the robber. This is the Robber ' s Den, or Black Tom ' s Lair. With boyish curiosity I visited it the day after his capture and gazed with awe and pity on his bed of leaves, his shoemaker ' s bench, the charred fire-logs and the bones of pigs and fowls, relics of his lawless life. Toward the southeast in the valley, about a mile distant, is the plantation devised to the University by its last owner, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth (Morgan) Mason, for the education of poor students. The bequest she requested to be called after her daughters, Martha and Varina, who died just as they reached womanhood. The portraits in oil of the young ladies, and of her husband. Rev. James Pleasant Mason, are by her request hanging in the University Library, and the authorities have added hers to the collection. The planta- 16