HISTORY OF GEORGIA. BOOK FIRST. ANTE-COLONIAL HISTORY. CHAPTER I. EARLY ENGLISH, FRENCH AND SPANISH VOYAGES TO GEORGIA, THE early history of America is obscure and unsatisfactory. Its "Ante-Columbian" period reaches backward five hundred years before the voyage of the Genoese navigator, and embraces, in its annals, the fables and traditions of the wild and sea-faring North men. Whether Georgia, in common with the country which now constitutes her neighbouring states, was discovered by the Celtic and Irish navigators in the tenth century,' and named, as is asserted in their chronicles, and on their charts, “Great Ireland," or "White Man's Land;" whether it was ever visited by Madawc, son of Owen Gwynedh, Prince of Wales, in his celebrated expedition in the twelfth century;3 or 1 So supposed by Professor Rafn, Antiquitates Americanæ, p. 448. Sagas of Thorfin and Eyrbyggja, in Beamish's Discovery of America by the Northmen, Lond. 1841. Vide map in the same, p. 169, where the name is set down as Hvitramannaland, Albania Irland ed Mikla. Wheaton's "Hist. of the Northmen, or Danes and Normans;" p. 29. 3 Powell's Hist. of Wales, Shrewsbury, 1832, 178; also Hakluyt's Early 2 EARLY VOYAGES TO GEORGIA. 4 whether the account of the Venitian navigators, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, who are said to have sailed about the close of the fourteenth century to countries, which Malte Brun surmises to have been along the borders of Georgia, have any truth or not; are still among the vexed questions of history, and will, doubtless, ever remain open to antiquarian research. If these different navigators did come to America, they left no evidence of occupancy, and but few traces, which can, with any show of reason, be referred to their visits; and their alleged discovery of a Western Hemisphere had been long forgotten, when Columbus gave a new world to Castile and Leon.5 6 Although England, through the misfortune of Bartholomew Columbus, lost the honour of discovering the new world, she acquired, through the energy of one of her subjects, much of the North American continent. This fact, the result of the enterprising commercial spirit of Bristol, though often controverted by interested princes, has ultimately compelled general acknowledgment, and is now one of the unalterable truths of history. English Voyages, iii. 1. The edition of Hakluyt here and elsewhere quoted in this work, is that "imprinted at London by George Bishop," and 1599-1600; three volumes bound in two, 4to. ; with Supplement to Hakluyt, Lond. 1812, one volume 4to. Anderson, in his History of the Colonial Church, i. 195, Lond. 1845, has an interesting sketch of this distinguished annalist, whose labours contributed so much to the planting and discovery of America. There is also a life of this most worthy chronicler in the "Biographia Britannica," and in the "Biographie Universelle." 4 Hakluyt, iii. 121; Irving's Columbus, iii. 295; Wheaton's Hist. of the Northmen, 30; Beamish's Discovery of America, &c., 58. 5 Inscription on the monument erected by King Ferdinand to the memory of Columbus, in the Carthusian Monastery of Las Cuevas, at Seville: "A Castilla y a Leon • Lord Bacon says, "Neither was it a refusal on the king's part, but a delay by accident, that put by so great an acquest." Hist. of the Reign of King Henry VII. Works, i. 780, London, (Ball's edition,) 1838. VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. 3 On the morning of the 24th of June, 1497, John and Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, England, in the ship Mathew, discovered land on the coast of Labrador, more than fourteen months before Columbus touched the main-land of the Western Hemisphere. The voyage of Columbus to the supposed country of India, which was fraught with such results, that "all men, with great admiration, affirmed it to be a thing more divine than human," excited such a spirit of maritime adventure, that all the nations of western Europe were anxious to seek out the new lands of the west, and several of them entered with zeal upon these distant adventures. The extent of the voyages of the Cabots north and south of "Prima Vista," has been the subject of much learned criticism and speculation, and still remains a mooted and unsettled point. The northern limits of their voyages are, however, better defined than the southern, which afford a latitude of thirteen degrees between the statements of conflicting historians. The evidence, though somewhat contradictory, and exceedingly perplexing, seems to favour the opinion that he coasted along our shores. His own words are: "Despairing to find the passage to India, I turned back again, and sailed down by the coast of that land toward the equinoxial, and came to that part of this firm land which is now termed Florida, where my victuals failing, I departed from thence and returned into England." But it must be borne in mind, that the imperfect state of geographical knowledge at that time, makes it difficult for us to locate Florida, as, 7 Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, with a Review of the History of Maritime Discovery, Lond. 1831, p. 56; known to be written by Richard Biddle, Esq. 8 Sebastian Cabot's Discourse to the Pope's Legate, in Hakluyt, iii. 7. 9 Ibid. 6. 4 911 VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. at one period, the name was given to all the land north of the Gulf of Mexico; so that even what is now Canada, was then termed Florida. The language of Peter Martyr, of Anghiera, counsellor to the King of Spain, who says of Cabot, "He is my friend, whom I use familiarly, and delight to have him sometimes keep me company in my own house,"10 upon this point is: "He sailed likewise in this track (south and west) so far toward the west, that he had the land of Cuba on his left hand in manner in the same degree of longitude. This statement, as well as his own to the Pope's Legate, though both are obscure, are sufficient to make it at least probable, that the coast of Georgia was part of the land which he discovered. At this distance of time, however, and with the imperfect materials extant, any opinion advanced must partake more of the speculative than positive character. The hint was indeed made use of by General Oglethorpe, in his memorial on the Spanish invasion of Georgia; but the discussion cannot now be of any practical importance, for, as Livy well says, the majority of readers have comparatively little interest in the origin and remote antiquities of a nation. Among the wonderful tales so eagerly circulated in Spain, concerning the new world, was the beautiful fiction, that in the western Archipelago there was a fountain, which had the power of giving youth and immortality to all who bathed in its waters. Urged by the love of adven 1o Peter Martyr, Dec. iii. cap. vi. 11 Ibid. 12 Peter Martyr, Dec. ii. cap. X., says, that it was an island about 325 leagues from Hispaniola, named Eriuca or Agnanes. And he assures Pope Leo X., to whom this second Decade is inscribed, that "not only all the people of the court, but also many of them, whom wisdom and fortune have divided from the common sort, think it to be true." Herrera, Dec. i. lib. ix. cap. v., says, "He was intent upon finding out the spring of Bimini and a river in Flo |