He may have been referring to Sargasso seaweed from coral reefs, which can been seen washed up on shore after a major storm off of the NC coast.
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Sir Walter Raleigh's explorers, the captains Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, wrote in 1584 that North Carolina's coast was "...so full of grapes as the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them...in all the world, the like abundance is not to be found."
The native grapes of this region of the southeastern United States are the Muscadine and the Scuppernong.
The county is divided into five townships: Alligator, Columbia, Gum Neck, Scuppernong, and South Fork - which are all part of the IBX - Inner Banks.