https://nc.water.usgs.gov/flood/floodstats/gaged/maps/basins.gif
As you travel in North Carolina you will see highway signs that specify that you are entering a river basin. The Roanoke and Chowan Rivers flow to the Albemarle Sound. The area, in North Carolina, between these rivers is called the Roanoke-Chowan. This project is devoted to the Roanoke-Chowan, and its neighbors in North Carolina and Virginia.

This area has a deep colonial ancestry. Archaeology has been conducted in Bertie County's "Site X" to determine if some of the Lost Colonists may have settled there. A newspaper article about the archaeologists' finds is at: http://pilotonline.com/news/local/history/did-the-lost-colony-live-at-site-x-clues-point/article_ddedefad-c4ea-5e54-88a6-44b388fb8e75.html
"Researchers are continuously discovering how the artifacts and writings may tie the Lost Colony to the Bertie site. The North Devon baluster jars used to provision ships with dried or salted fish were used in the late 1500s. The Surrey-Hampshire Border ware matches hundreds of pottery fragments found in early Jamestown, but was not used that much past the early 1600s."
For context North Carolina's first documented permanent white settlers, moved from Virginia in the 1650s; Nathaniel Batts to Pasquotank & George Durant to Perquimans.