Copyright, 1887, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. A CHAPTER VI. THE ENGLISH COLONIZATION OF GEORGIA. 1733-1752. BY CHARLES C. JONES, JR., LL. D. CTING under the orders of Admiral Coligny, Captain Ribault, before selecting a location for his fort and planting his Huguenot colony near the mouth of Port Royal, traversed what is now known as the Georgia coast, observed its harbors, and named several of the principal rivers emptying into the Atlantic Ocean.1 "It was a fayre coast, stretchyng of a great length, couered with an infinite number of high and fayre trees." The waters" were boyling and roaring, through the multitude of all kind of fish." The inhabitants were "all naked and of a goodly stature, mightie, and as well shapen and proportioned of body as any people in ye world; very gentle, courteous, and of a good nature." Lovingly entertained were these strangers by the natives, and they were, in the delightful spring-time, charmed with all they beheld. As they viewed the country they pronounced it the "fairest, fruitfullest, and pleasantest of all the world, abounding in hony, venison, wilde foule, forests, woods of all sorts, Palmtrees, Cypresse, and Cedars, Bayes ye highest and greatest; with also the fayrest vines in all the world, with grapes according, which, without natural art and without man's helpe or trimming, will grow to toppes of Okes and other trees that be of a wonderfull greatness and height. And the sight of the faire medowes is a pleasure not able to be expressed with tongue: full of Hernes, Curlues, Bitters, Mallards, Egrepths, Wood-cocks, and all other kinds of small birds; with Harts, Hindes, Buckes, wilde Swine, and all other kindes of wilde beastes, as we perceiued well, both by their footing there, and also afterwardes in other places by their crie and roaring in the night. . . . Also there be Conies and Hares, Silk Wormes in merueilous number, a great deale fairer and better than be our silk wormes. To be short, it is a thing vnspeakable to consider the thinges that bee seene there and shal be founde more and more in this incomperable lande, which, neuer yet broken with plough yrons, bringeth forth al things according to his first nature wherewith the eternall God indued it." 1 [This story is told in Vol. II. chap. iv. — ED.] Enraptured with the delights of climate, forests, and waters, and transferring to this new domain names consecrated by pleasant associations at home, Captain Ribault called the River St. Mary the Seine, the Satilla the Somme, the Alatamaha the Loire, the Newport the Charante, the Great Ogeechee the Garonne, and the Savannah the Gironde. Two years afterward, when René de Laudonnière visited Ribault's fort, he found it deserted. The stone pillar inscribed with the arms of France, which he had erected to mark the farthest confines of Charles IX.'s dominion in the Land of Flowers, was garlanded with wreaths. Offerings of maize and fruits lay at its base; and the natives, regarding the structure with awe and veneration, had elevated it into the dignity of a god. As yet no permanent lodgment had been effected in the territory subsequently known as Georgia. The first Europeans who are known to have traversed it were Hernando de Soto and his companions, whose story has been told elsewhere.1 The earliest grant of the lower part of the territory claimed by England under the discovery of Cabot, was made by His Majesty King Charles I., in the fifth year of his reign, to Sir Robert Heath, his attorney-general. In that patent it is called Carolina Florida, and the designated limits extended from the river Matheo in the thirtieth degree, to the river Passa Magna in the thirty-sixth degree of north latitude. There is good reason for the belief that actual possession was taken under this concession, and that, in the effort to colonize, considerable sums were expended by the proprietor and by those claiming under him. Whether this grant was subsequently surrendered, or whether it was vacated and declared null for non user or other cause, we are not definitely informed. Certain it is that King Charles II., in the exercise of his royal pleasure, issued to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina two grants of the same territory with some slight modifications of boundaries. The latter of these grants, bearing date the 30th of June in the seventeenth year of his reign, conveys to the Lords Proprietors that portion of America between the thirty-sixth and one half and the twenty-ninth degrees of north latitude. While the English were engaged in peopling a part of the coast embraced within these specified limits, the Spaniards contented themselves with confirming their settlements at St. Augustine and a few adjacent points. Although in 1670 England and Spain entered into stipulations for composing their differences in America, stipulations which have since been known as the American Treaty, the precise line of separation between Carolina and Florida was not defined. Between these powers disputes touching this boundary were not infrequent. In view of this unsettled condition of affairs, and in order to assert a positive claim to, and retain possession of, the debatable ground which neither party was willing either to relinquish or clearly to point out, the English established and maintained a small military post on the south end of Cumberland Island, where the river St. Mary empties its waters into the Atlantic. 1 [Vol. II. p. 244. — ED.] |