Blue Highways: Bath, North Carolina

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapIn Bath, we take a trip back to learn about an early to mid-20th century author and her contributions to American literature, stage and screen.  Click on the map to see the place that all of this is associated with.  Comments welcome!

Book Quote

"It was in Bath, the oldest town in North Carolina, that Edna Ferber went on board the James Adams Floating Palace Theater in 1925 to see a showboat performance - the only one she ever saw."

Blue Highways: Part 2, Chapter 13

Street signs in Bath, North Carolina

Bath, North Carolina

Why does William Least Heat-Moon mention Edna Ferber in the quote from Blue Highways?  He makes it a point to write that the only showboat performance she ever saw was on the James Adams Floating Theater in Bath, North Carolina.

Well, those of you who are fans of American literature and/or American musicals might know that Edna Ferber wrote the novel Show Boat, upon which the Broadway musical Show Boat is based.  That visit to the James Adams was very important to the development of the novel.  Three separate movies of Show Boat were made, in 1929, 1936 and 1951, with the 1936 film ranked by the American Film Institute as 24th out of America's best musicals.  But Edna Ferber's influence stretches farther than that.  Without Show Boat, we would never have heard the showstopping performance of Paul Robeson on the song Ol' Man River.  Robeson was African-American, a giant of American culture whose voice and presence on stage and screen transcended the wrong and unjust policies of discrimination prevalent at the time.  Unfortunately, he was persecuted in his life as well, labeled a communist (eventually exonerated), and died in seclusion.

But even beyond Show Boat, Edna Ferber wrote a novel, Giant, that was made into a panoramic movie of the 50s starring such iconic actors as Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and the ultimately tragic James Dean.

To say that Edna Ferber saw one performance on a showboat in Bath, North Carolina is almost like saying that Jack Nicklaus watched a round of golf on TV before going out and winning The Masters.  It is like saying that George Gershwin spent a night in a Harlem juke joint before writing the music for Porgy and Bess.  Or, for the more modern, it is like saying that Steve Jobs looked at a CD player once before creating the Ipod.

Edna Ferber herself was a distinguished woman of American letters.  She won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel So Big, which itself was made into a movie, but her lasting influence on America was through her novels Show Boat and Giant.  She had a knack for writing strong female characters at a time when discrimination against women was pretty common and routine.  She also made room in her novels for other ethnic minorities who, as written by her, routinely faced discrimination.  She appeared to especially have a soft spot for the underdogs, the people who weren't beautiful or who had flaws and therefore a life stacked against them.

She was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table, made famous by its host, the acid-tongued Dorothy Parker, and could hold her own against the strong personages assembled there.  When Noel Coward, a multi-talented person of letters and stage and who had a quick and acerbic wit, remarked upon her clothing by saying that she almost looked like a man, Ferber replied back "so do you."

I often wish I had a quick wit like that.  While I can pull out a few one-liners, and occasionally get a zing in on a friend or two, I'm usually just one step too slow.

I've never seen Show Boat, but I have seen the clip of Paul Robeson's performance of Ol' Man River.  The song was written by Jerome Kern, and is about as meaningful a song about America's life artery as any that has ever been written.  In the voice of Paul Robeson, however, it is a majestic tribute to one of the most distinguishing and distinguished features of America.  I couldn't stand next to the Mississippi River as it rolled past New Orleans when I lived there without hearing that song in my head and picturing first the slaves and later the predominantly poor African American dockworkers upon whose backs a significant portion of my country's wealth was built.

I have read the book and seen the movie Giant, and living in Texas gave me a perspective on that novel that I wouldn't have had otherwise.  Set just as America was becoming prosperous after the war, it shows the human side of our progress, a love triangle pitting the old ranching community against the new riches of oil.  Giant captures Texas, and the United States, at a point where significant decisions about our country's priorities were being made, and Ferber boils it down to two men and the woman between them.

Bath is the oldest town in North Carolina, and as such deserves to be recognized.  But it made a very important contribution to our culture by providing an opportunity for one author to seat herself at a performance on a showboat anchored there.

Ferber, who never married nor was known to have any relationship, once wrote "Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful experience after you cease to struggle."  She also said "A woman can look moral and exciting...if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle."  She certainly gave us all types of wonderful characters representing all walks of American life, both in her own life and her many works.

If you want to know more about Bath

Beaufort County: Bath
A Brief History of Bath
NC Historic Sites: Bath
NC Historic Sites: Bath and Edna Ferber
Wikipedia: Bath

Next up: New Bern, North Carolina

Blue Highways: Swanquarter, North Carolina

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapGoing through North Carolina, we pass through Swanquarter (Swan Quarter) with William Least Heat-Moon.  This time, I look at the mythology and symbolism of swans, which is pretty surprisingly extensive, and come to the conclusion that I would like to be considered a swan.  Where is Swanquarter?  Click the map to see, and leave a comment if you are inclined!

Book Quote

"...then down along Lake Mattamuskeet (drained in the thirties for farming but once again full of water and wildlife), to Swanquarter ..."

Blue Highways: Part 2, Chapter 13

Fishing boats at Swan Quarter, North Carolina

Swanquarter (Swan Quarter), North Carolina

Given the name of the place, I thought I'd look around to see what I could learn about swans and their place in our collective human history.  The town of Swan Quarter was probably named so because swans stopped in the wetlands area about the town (though there is some sentiment that a man named Swann lived in the area long ago, thus giving the town its name).  However, the images that swans evoke in our conscience makes it an intriguing name to explore.

Swans are most associated with beauty and love.  Stories like The Ugly Duckling and the reputation for mating for life that swans are associated with are images indelibly etched in our conscience.  I remember watching the Disney movie The Ugly Duckling and being incredibly moved by the story (damn you Disney!).  Partially this is because I identified with the poor little ugly duckling (being given up for adoption, having a terrible self-image, craving love and affection - the usual stuff that gets dealt with in therapy for 40 or so years).  But it's a fantasy that transcends all of us - who doesn't want to be the swan?  These fantasies can be as little as wishing we would find out that we are really the heirs to a great fortune, to getting our hair cut or made over, to dressing up for proms and weddings and quinceneras and trying to look really fine.  I think that in many ways we all want to be the swan.  Watch this video and just see if it doesn't move you, if it doesn't touch some part of you.

Swans are also associated with more erotic and salacious parts of our nature.  Leda and the Swan recounts the tale of the conception of Helen of Troy.  Leda, Queen of Sparta, captured the attentions of Zeus, King of the Gods, and he seduced her in the form of a swan.

Because of their graceful nature, swans are also associated with holiness and purity.  Norse legend has it that two swans drank from a well whose waters were so pure that the swans and all their descendants are white.  The guise of swans also, in Irish legend, served to keep people safe.  In The Wooing of Etain, an underworld king turns himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland into swans to escape the armies of the Irish king, and in The Children of Lir, a woman transforms her children into swans for 900 years.

But lest we associate all good with swans, they are also symbols of death.  In Finnish mythology, a swan swims in the river of the underworld, and Finnish legend says that anyone who kills a swan will die themselves.

But the most interesting view of the swan to me is in Hinduism.  Hindus see the swan as a symbol of being a part of the world but not attached to it.  In other words, the person who is most like the swan, whose feathers are in the water but not wet, is a saint.  This appeals to me on some levels, and yet doesn't on others.  In my view, which has been shaped by my family, friends and even my religious beliefs, one should be engaged in the world, especially if one wants to make it better.  To me, this means being attached to things in the world in some way.  So in this way, I have trouble being like the swan, because I want to be attached to the world.  Not necessarily to things, but I want to be attached to people and to outcomes I want to see happen.  But I will say those people that have a certain air of detachment about them, that do not let minor troubles and the issues of others make them crazy and still manage to do good for friends, neighbors and the world in general, those are people I respect and try to emulate.

William Least Heat-Moon passes through Swan Quarter on a trip of discovery and reflection.  In that sense, he is trying to engage and attach with things and people that he encounters.  Perhaps his journey was an attempt to put things in perspective after a difficult period, and in that way recapture the engaged detachment that Hindus attribute to swans - to be a part of the world and not get too attached to it.

On a more base and purely vain level, though, I still want to be a graceful, handsome swan.  I try to aspire to the Hindu, but as one who for many years considered himself akin to the Ugly Duckling...give me the swan any day.

If you want to know more about Swanquarter (Swan Quarter)

A History of Swan Quarter, North Carolina
Coastal North Carolina Cruising Guide: SwanQuarter
Nature Conservancy: Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge and Gull Rock
Town of Swan Quarter
US Fish and Wildlife Services: Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service: Swan Quarter
Wikipedia: Swan Quarter

Next up: Bath, North Carolina

Blue Highways: Engelhard, North Carolina

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapA disjointed post today, as I try to think up things that Engelhard, North Carolina brings to mind.  I actually just got back from a play about Moby Dick, Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod, so the sea and seafood is on my mind.  To learn about Engelhard and its connection to seafood, click on the thumbnail at right.

Book Quote

"Along highway 264, skirting the sound, grew stands of loblolly and slash pine, as well as water oaks, bayberry, and laurel.  Away from the open waters, the day was warm, and in pocosins drained by small canals and natural sloughs, mud turtles, their black shells the color of the water, crawled up to the warmth on half-submerged logs.

"The road passed through the fishing town of Engelhard..."

Blue Highways: Part 2, Chapter 13

Boats in Engelhard, North Carolina

Engelhard, North Carolina

Reading this passage, I had to look up a few words.  Not having grown up on the East Coast, I didn't know what loblolly or slash pine was, nor did I know what water oaks or bayberry looked like.  Finally, I wasn't sure what a pocosin is.  So this was an education in itself.

Loblolly pines and slash pines are relatively long-needled pines.  They sort of look like the bull pines I grew up with in my area of California.  Water oaks are a type of oak tree, of course, but with leaves that I wouldn't have recognized as oak leaves.  Bayberry has pretty purple berries that it appears can be eaten.

A pocosin is something I've never experienced.  It's a type of marshy wetland, and in some areas is referred to rather colorfully as a "dismal."  The marshy area is caused by seepage from creeks or sloughs that drain the area, and the soils are nutrient poor.  However, they are a good habitat for the loblolly pine.

I didn't grow up around many marshes or swamps, so I'm not really all that familiar with that type of wetland.  The closest thing to a swamp that I knew of was man-made.  Pudding Creek was dammed by the lumber company in my town so that they could float logs there.  By the time I was around, it wasn't a log retaining pond anymore, but the dam caused marsh grasses to grow up around the edges of the creek and give it that swamp-like attributes.  And the best part?  Unlike Louisiana swamps, there were no snakes nor alligators.

Of course when I lived in New Orleans, we were surrounded by swamps.  My two main experiences with them was driving over the Atchafalaya Swamp on the elevated Interstate 10, and taking an airboat tour.  Which is to say, not much at all.  But New Orleans' precarious position meant that we were all aware of the swamps that surrounded us.  After Katrina, the importance of and the plight of the wetlands of coastal Louisiana were driven home to most Louisianans, if not a good portion of the country.

William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) doesn't stop or give any description of Engelhard, but doing a little web research reveals that it may be an unincorporated community, but it seems to have some life to it.  I am curious about the Engelhard Seafood Festival, which may not have existed when LHM drove through.  It appears to be a pretty large event, and I think that I would really like it because, growing up in a coastal town, I love seafood.  My mother's father and her two brothers were fishermen, and so we often had fresh fish on the plate.  To this day, if I am in a coastal area, I never fail to get fish.  But since I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and far from any coast, I don't get it as often as I would like.  Sure, I order mussels or clams here.  But, please don't tell my mom, but I've picked up a little of her snobbishness about fish.  She always had to have it practically wiggling out of the boat, and will turn up her nose at fish unless she knows that it is really fresh.  Unlike her, I will eat flash-frozen fish, but usually the farther I am from the coast the less likely I am to eat seafood.  So all of this is a long way of saying that Engelhard's Fish Festival sounds mighty fine to me.

As you can guess, I am finding it hard to come up with a consistent topic for this particular stop, so you are getting a bit of disconnected and disjointed thoughts.  But, sometimes reading does that to us.  Do you ever read a passage and find yourself reading it again and again because something else is on your mind and you aren't really paying attention?  Or do you find that a certain passage just isn't taking you to a very deep place?  Reading is supposed to take us out of our reality, and put us someplace else, even if the someplace else does not correspond to the linearity most of us like.  There's nothing wrong with that, and sometimes we even learn something.  I now know what loblolly and slash pines are, I know what a water oak is, and am tempted to try bayberries if I ever get a chance.  And I can now throw the word "pocosin" into a sentence and sound really smart.  I'm also really hungry for some seafood.

If you want to know more about Engelhard

Engelhard Facebook Page
Engelhard Seafood Festival
Granville Grant in Engelhard
Hotel Engelhard
NC Folk blog post about Engelhard
Northeast Fisheries Sciences Center: Community Profile on Engelhard
Wikipedia: Engelhard

Next up:  Swanquarter, North Carolina

Blue Highways: Fort Raleigh National Historic Site

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapToday we confront the mystery of the Roanoke Colony.  Just what does that word Croatoan mean?  Where did the colonists go?  It is a great early America story with multiple possible endings.  Click on the map to see the site of this mysterious lost colony, and feel free to leave a comment if you have an idea what happened to them.

Book Quote

"Because of its setting in deep woods, its age, its Croatoan mystery, and because it is the lone remnant of the first English attempt at settlement in America, Fort Raleigh is fascinating.  But it is also a monument to the disease of an old world, gone tired and corrupt, trying to exploit a newer land.  The whole ugly European process is here in capsule history:  England, wanting to emulate Spain's financial success in pillaging the New World (but learning nothing from Spanish mistakes in dealing with Indians) and at the same time trying to circumscribe the expansion of colonial Spain out of Florida, sent a group of men, most nothing more than gentlemen pirates called 'privateers,' to establish a colonly and enrich England with marketable commodities."

Blue Highways: Part 2, Chapter 12

Excavation at Fort Raleigh NHS, North Carolina

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, North Carolina

Imagine an alien ship arrives in an new land.  The ship disgorges its inhabitants, whose appearance, language and demeanor are completely strange and unintelligible to the land's, but the visitors look unwell, and the inhabitants greet them and attempt to make them feel welcome.  The visitors set up a living area, and the inhabitants, who know everything about their land, are compelled to help them over and over again as these visitors are ill equipped to deal with their environment.  But over time, the visitors begin to reveal themselves as more interested in colonizing and taking resources than living as friendly neighbors.  Hostilities break out between the original inhabitants and the visitors.  The alien ship leaves in order to resupply the visitors, but does not return for a long period of time.  When a new alien ship finally arrives, it finds no trace of the visitors except for a single word left behind.

Sounds like a science fiction story set on another world, doesn't it?  This is actually the story of the first permanent English colony in America, Roanoke Colony, established at the site of Fort Raleigh in 1585.  A first wave of settlers came to Roanoke Island and established a settlement, but deserted the colony and went back to England with Sir Francis Drake after a relief expedition never arrived.  A second colony was established at the same site in 1587, but a relief expedition took three years to arrive due to the English war with Spain.  When the relief expedition finally got to the settlement site in 1590, it had been abandoned and a single word, "Croatoan," was found carved in post at the fort.  The relief expedition assumed that the settlement went to live with the nearby Croatoan Indians, but no trace of the settlers was ever found.

This is a wonderful mystery that exists at the very beginning of our country.  It contains its share of characters both good and not-so-good.  Sir Richard Grenville, for instance, who punitively punished and regularly raided the very Native Americans that had offered their hands in friendship to the colony.  Another was Virginia Dare, the first English person born on what would become U.S. soil, and who disappeared with the rest of the colony.  Yet another was Sir Walter Raleigh, who never stepped foot there but who hoped that the colony would increase his wealth and the wealth of England as well as blunt the advances of Spain in the region.  William Least Heat-Moon mentions Thomas Harriot, who was the scientist of the expedition and felt that there could be a cross-cultural exchange of ideas between the Natives and the English.

And that word.  Croatoan.  When I first heard this story, that word seemed to sum up the entire mystery.  It was carved in a post at the fort.  The instructions to the colonists were that if they were forced out of the settlement and captured, they should carve a Maltese cross, which looks like four arrowheads converging at right angles on a single point, in a conspicuous place and the name of the place they were being taken.  But there was no cross, so the settlers were not forcibly taken.  It was assumed they went to live with the Croatoan tribe.  But no trace of them was found.  Legends abound about what happened to the colonists.  Some legends, spoken of by Native Americans themselves, say that the colony was attacked and the settlers put to death.  Others say that the colonists joined a friendly Indian tribe, such as the Croatoans, and intermingled.  The mystery yet deepens when later settlers reported an Indian tribe in North Carolina that spoke English and already knew about Christianity, even though they had never been in contact with English peoples before.  Virginia Dare, the first English child born on North American soil, became the subject of legend herself, and in those legends grew up to be a beautiful blond maiden who was a wonder to the tribes of the area and was the object of many powerful suitors, including Wanchese, the Native American who once traveled to England with Manteo.

In the end, the Roanoke colony's failure did not stem the tide of English colonization.  In a few years, the permanent settlement of Jamestown was established, and from then on the story becomes one of war and pain, with Native Americans fighting to save their lands from the new invaders.  Would history have been different had proof been found that the Native Americans did save the Roanoke settlers, and, as Thomas Harriot wished, shared their knowledge with them?  Would the U.S. look different today had Virginia Dare appeared to successive colonists, told her story, and served as an intermediary between two peoples?  Or would the story have remained the same?   Would one side have still conquered a continent, while the other side fought a losing battle against the forces of progress?

Sir Walter Raleigh, the Rennaissance man who financed the Roanoke expedition, once wrote:

What is our life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division,
Our mother's wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the setting sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only we die in earnest, that's no jest.

We know how Raleigh's life played out in history, culminating in his execution in England.  But we may never know the true story of the Roanoke colony he founded, which has become one of our earliest passion plays, even though the colonists' graves hide them "from the setting sun," and "are like drawn curtains when the play is done."  It is a gift in a way, because our imaginations can run free with possible narratives that can include life, death, passion, romance, treachery...in short, whatever we want...and all wrapped up in one word, Croatoan.  To me, that's the hallmark of a great mystery.

If you want to know more about Fort Raleigh

The Colony at Roanoke (Ralph Lane's firsthand account to Sir Walter Raleigh, 1586)
Croatoan and Roanoke: A General History
Fort Raleigh and the Lost Colony
Fort Raleigh NHS (official website)
A Legend of Virginia Dare
The Lost Colony: Roanoke Island
National Parks Conservation Association: Fort Raleigh
The Shadowlands.net: The Lost Colony of Roanoke
Wikipedia: Fort Raleigh NHS
Wikipedia: Roanoke Colony

Next up:  Engelhard, North Carolina

Blue Highways: Wanchese, North Carolina

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapIf Manteo is the flash and glitz that recalls the Elizabethan era, then Wanchese is its groundling cousin, with emphasis on fishing and hard work.  At least that's how it appeared to William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) 30 years ago.  Where is Wanchese?  Click on the map to find out.

Book Quote

"In 1584, Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, the leaders of Raleigh's first colonial exploratory expedition, returned to London from Roanoke with tobacco, potatoes, and a pair of 'lustie' Indians to be trained as interpreters.  Their names were Manteo and Wanchese.  The Virgin Queen and the courtiers in their lace ruffs were fascinated by the red men.  Months later when the Indians returned to the sound, Manteo, the first man baptized by the British in America, was on his way to becoming a proper English gentleman.  But Wanchese, after seeing London, came back an enemy of 'civilized' society.  Four hundred years, the towns carrying their names, sitting at almost opposite ends of the island, still show that separation."

Blue Highways: Part 2, Chapter 10

Harbor at Wanchese, North Carolina

Wanchese, North Carolina

Two men, removed from their lives and taken to a far off place.  Each spends a few months there, objects of curiousity and also of English intent in the New World.  And each comes back to their home with two very different views of their hosts/captors and the world they have seen.  Manteo wants to emulate the people he spent time with, and Wanchese wants nothing to do with them and their civilization.

It's a great story because I think it approximates the human condition, at least in some part.  In every civilization are found people who embrace it and its accomplishments and its progress fully; however you also find people who are uneasy about it or even fear it.  And the truth is, most of us lie somewhere in between on that spectrum.

Think of all the great accomplishments that our own civilization has wrought.  An obvious example is today's technological achievements, particularly in communication technology.  No matter where we go, it is possible today for every man, woman and child to be connected.  Cell phones, just 15 years ago still somewhat of luxury, now are in the hands of most people.  Not only are they simply phones, but they are "smart" phones, allowing us to be even further connected by offering us access to the Internet and allowing us to send text messages and photos.  My wife will often ask me, even when we are going out to the same place together, if I have my cell phone.

It's great to have such a resource at my disposal.  It comes in handy when I have an auto emergency, or quickly need to contact someone.  I remember the days when one had to search for a pay phone, and hope that the correct change was at hand.  I remember pulling out long-distance cards in airports, calling an 800 number and then plugging in a 16 digit number plus the area code and the number I was calling.  It is now incredibly convenient to have a phone on my person where I can make a normal call.

But when my wife asks me if I have my cell phone, my eyes can't help rolling a little and a sarcastic retort comes into my head.  "Whatever did we do before we had our cell phones?"  Because there is something disturbing to me still about being so connected.  There is something a little strange to me still about always being available to someone and that to completely disconnect is not an automatic option connected with leaving the home and office anymore, but involves a conscious choice to turn off my cell phone or power down my computer.

I have no doubt that Wanchese came back and made use of the new things that he had learned about the English and their ways to try to stave off the encroachment of this new people and civilization.  But, Wanchese was also the last chief of his tribe, which disappeared into the mists of history. Manteo became the first Native American nobleman in America.  In the end, Wanchese's tribe succumbed to the forces of progress, and Manteo might have been better off embracing them.  Should we all just unquestioningly embrace change?

I know younger people do not have this inner dichotomy at all.  In fact, they embrace the chance to be connected one hundred percent of the time.  But this older guy has a little bit of Manteo inside me, that wants to embrace that which is new and which, in a way, seems better.  But I also have a bit of Wanchese in me.  I sometimes look at progress and is in some ways deeply disturbed.  Corporate greed in the name of progress has led to billions of people in hardship.  America's technological prowess and might have come at great expense to world resources and world environmental health.  I ride a bike to work instead of using a car, I recycle, and I try to be as energy efficient as possible.  But it's a choice I have, not an imperative.  I do not have to try to feed a family on a dollar a day.  I do not want to minimize what progress has done to make my life healthier and easier.  But, I am aware that even my acts of deprivation in attempts to be a good world citizen are luxurious.

As William Least Heat-Moon was writing, the same forces are at work upon the two towns.  Manteo embraces what will become the new economy geared toward tourism by playing up its Elizabethan roots.  Wanchese remains the fishing town, whose gritty working class mentality is under siege by the forces of progress.  Later in the chapter, he writes of loading crabs on a truck and watching as a man who brings in a load of crabs on his boat is turned away and ends up dumping his load back into the sea.  And a chapter later, he speaks to an older man who is deeply distrustful of the forces of progress represented by banks and corporate leaders far away who make decisions.  Where I grew up, the fishing industry was decimated, along with the lumber industry - just two casualties of progress.  People cannot make a living fishing out of my town anymore, and the harbor is strangely silent where when I was a child, a hundred fishing boats left the harbor every morning.  Our neighboring town embraced arts and its attraction to well-heeled tourists, and is thriving, while ours still tries to find its identity, caught between its working class roots and the demands of a new time.

Two minds, Wanchese and Manteo, and two different interpretations of the same experience.  Two different outcomes.  They are fascinating symbols of both our curiousity and our uneasiness with the new.  Yet for now, progress marches on.

If you want to know more about Wanchese

The Coastal Explorer: Welcome to Manteo and Wanchese
Wikipedia: Wanchese

Next up: Fort Raleigh National Historic Park, North Carolina