War having been declared against Spain, Mr. Oglethorpe was promoted to the rank of general in the British army, and, at the head of two thousand men, partly from Virginia and the Carolinas, undertook an expedition against Florida. He took two Spanish forts, and besieged St. Augustine; but, encountering an obstinate resistance, was compelled to return unsuccessful to Georgia.

Two years afterwards, the Spaniards, in retaliation, prepared to invade Georgia; and they intended, if successful there, to subjugate the Carolinas and Virginia. On receiving information of their approach, General Oglethorpe solicited assistance from South Carolina. But the inhabitants of that colony, entertaining a strong prejudice against him, in consequence of his late defeat, and terrified by the danger which threatened themselves, determined to provide only for their own safety.

Meanwhile General Oglethorpe made preparations for a vigorous defence. He assembled seven hundred men, exclusive of a body of Indians, fixed his head-quarters at Frederica, on the Island of St. Simon, and, with this small band, determined to encounter whatever force might be brought against him.— It was his utmost hope that he might be able to resist the enemy until a reinforcement should arrive from Carolina, which he daily and anxiously expected.

On the last of June, the Spanish fleet, consisting of thirtytwo sail, and having on board more than three thousand men, came to anchor off St. Simon's bar. Notwithstanding all the resistance which General Oglethorpe could oppose, they sailed up the river Alatamaha, landed upon the island, and there erected fortifications.

General Oglethorpe, convinced that his small force, if divided, must be entirely inefficient, assembled the whole of it at Frederica. One portion of it he employed in strengthening his fortifications: the Highlanders and Indians, ranging night and day through the woods, often attacked the outposts of the enemy. The toil of the troops was incessant; and the long delay of the expected succours, so cruelly withheld by South Carolina, caused the most gloomy and depressing apprehensions.

Learning that the Spanish army occupied two distinct positions, Oglethorpe conceived the project of attacking one by surprise. He selected the bravest of his little army, and in the night marched, entirely unobserved, to within two miles of the camp which he intended to assail. Directing his troops to halt, he advanced, at the head of a small body, to reconnoitre the enemy. While thus employed, a French soldier of his party, firing his musket, deserted to the Spaniards.Discovery destroying all hope of success, the general imme

diately returned to Frederica. He was not only chagrined at this occurrence, but apprehended instant danger from the disclosure which the deserter would doubtless make of his weak

ness.

In this embarrassment, he devised an expedient which was attended with the most happy success. He wrote a letter to the deserter, desiring him to acquaint the Spaniards with the defenceless state of Frederica; to urge them to attack the place, and, if he could not succeed, to persuade them to remain three days longer on the island; for, within that time, according to late advices from Carolina, he should receive a reinforcement of two thousand men and six ships of war. He cautioned him against dropping any hint of the attack meditated, by Admiral Vernon, upon St. Augustine, and assured him that the reward for his services should be ample.

For a small bribe, a soldier who had been made a prisoner in one of the numerous skirmishes, engaged to deliver this letter to the deserter, and was then set at liberty. As was foreseen, he carried it directly to the Spanish general, who immediately suspected the deserter to be a spy from the English camp, and ordered him to be put in irons. But although his suspicions were awakened, he was yet uncertain whether the whole might not be a stratagem of his antagonist.

While hesitating what to believe, three small vessels of war appeared off the coast. Supposing they brought the reinforcements alluded to in the letter to the deserter, he hesitated no longer, but determined to make a vigorous attack upon the English, before these reinforcements could arrive and be brought into action. General Oglethorpe, by mere accident, obtained information of their design. A small party was instantly placed in ambuscade; the Spaniards advanced near them, halted to rest, and laid aside their arms. A sudden and

well-directed fire, killing many, threw the enemy into confusien. After a few more discharges, they fled to their fortifications, which they demolished, and, hastily embarking, made every possible effort to escape from the reinforcements that were supposed to be approaching.

Thus was Georgia, with trifling loss, delivered from the most imminent danger. General Oglethorpe not only retrieved, but exalted his reputation. From the Carolinians, grateful for their preservation, and from the governors of most of the northern colonies, he received cordial congratulations upon his address and good fortune. And so mortified were the Spaniards at the result of the expedition, that the commander, on his return, was arrested, tried, and cashiered for misconduct.

But the prosperity of the colony was retarded by these disturbances. For ten years longer, it remained under the management of the trustees, who, embarrassing it by too much

regulation, discouraged the emigrants and checked its growth. At length, disappointed in their hopes, and wearied by complaints, they surrendered their charter to the crown; and, in 1754, a royal government was established over the colony.

New regulations being adopted, Georgia began to flourish. Among her governors, James Wright deserves honourable notice for his wisdom in discerning, and his zeal in pursuing, her true interests. The cultivation of rice and indigo was prosecuted with augmented industry, skill, and profit; and in every succeeding year, an increased amount of these staple commodities was exported to the mother country. The Florida Indians were sometimes troublesome, but were as often chastised, and compelled to sue for peace.

CHAPTER XV.

GENERAL TOPICS.

THE incidents which attended the first settlement of the original THIRTEEN COLONIES, and the most important events which occurred in each, until nearly a century and a half had elapsed after the landing of Smith at Jamestown, have been gathered and recorded. They have struggled through the perils which beset them in infancy; they have gained courage and self-confidence amid sanguinary conflicts and terrible sufferings; have acquired wisdom from the teachings of varied and stern experience; have matured their civil institutions, and, in their struggles with maternal authority, have lost few of their prrivileges, and forgotten none that they have lost.

Two leading motives, the most powerful, doubtless, of all motives in their operation on men in masses, impelled the people of the Old World to pour themselves upon the Newthe love of wealth and the desire of religious freedom. The former gave existence to the colonies of Virginia, the Carolinas, New York, and New Hampshire; the latter to those of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. In their progress during infancy, both motives aided to swell the population of all; but probably more, in the whole, came over impelled by religious than by worldly motives. But few were induced to emigrate by the love of political, disconnected with religious, freedom. That passion had its growth, if not its birth, in the New World. To whatever rank the emigrants might have belonged at home, here they could not remain long together without perceiving the folly of hereditary distinctions, nor without discovering that all, who were equal in mind and muscle, were equally useful

in their young communities. Insensibly freedom became to them like the air they breathed. They thought not of it until they felt the strange sensation of some foreign restraint upon their actions and pursuits.

The emigrants were of different classes as well as of different nations. New England was settled principally from Old England. In that country, the Norman and Saxon races were never completely amalgamated. In the Cavaliers the Norman, in the Puritans the Saxon, blood prevailed; and New England was settled by the Puritans. In those colonies again appeared the Anglo-Saxon complexion, tenures, and dialect, with less admixture than had existed elsewhere for centuries. Habits

of serious, devout contemplation, and of profound thought; a slight proneness to superstition; a willingness to labour; fortitude to endure; and firmness, and even obstinacy, of purpose, distinguished the settlers of that region, and perhaps also those of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In the emigrants to Virginia, the Carolinas, and Maryland, the Anglo-Norman blood prevailed. The grantees of those colonies were principally high in rank, noble by title, and followers of the court. Thither flocked Cavaliers at all times, and especially when Puritanism bore sway at home; they brought thither feudal tenures, and the law of primogeniture; there they established the religion of the court, and there they found or introduced the same kind of society as that to which they had been accustomed at home; they formed a landed aristocracy, could live without labour, command obsequious servants and slaves, enjoy the royal sport of hunting, and again act the parts of the Norman nobles under the early successors of William the Conqueror.

At this time Ireland had not begun to overflow upon America. Scotland sent some of her worthiest children, and every colony welcomed all who came. From Holland and Germany migrated families and associated companies, and the states of New York and Pennsylvania bear witness to their skill and success in agriculture, to their industry, economy, and thrift. The bigoted Louis, misnamed the Great, drove thousands of French Protestants into exile; the best of them came to America; their descendants have illustrated the annals of Carolina; and Jay, Boudinot, and Bowdoin, have, by their services and munificence, well rewarded the northern colonies for the protection afforded to their ancestors.

For one trait of character, and that which is even now most conspicuous, all the emigrants must have been distinguished. The mere fact of their leaving the abodes of civilization and crossing the ocean to throw themselves into an untried state of existence, which they knew was beset with perils, proves that they were animated by the spirit of enterprise. The

blood did not move feebly in the veins of those who left the Öld for the New World, whether they came to add to their wealth, to worship God in their own way, to prey upon their own species, to hunt in magnificent forests, or to seek romantic adventures where all was new and wild, and wonderful. Of the timid, the idle, the lazy, and the sickly, none came to America; or, if they came, they soon disappeared from among her population. The fathers and mothers of our people were of strong muscles and stout hearts, and their immediate descendants were made hardier, bolder, and more active, by the labours and perils among which they were reared.

The Indians of course receded, the wild beasts fled, and the trees of the forests fell, before them. The virgin earth yielded its increase, even a hundred fold; lofty pines floated down the rivers and across the ocean to a market; the beaver parted with its beautiful fur; and the sea gave up its myriads of fish. The ports of Europes, of the West Indies, and of South America, witnessed the arrival of ships freighted with the commodities of the English colonies,-of which the Indian weed was most coveted abroad,-and the departure of ships carrying to them the manufactures of the Old World, or the tropical productions of the New.

England, prompted by commercial avarice, determined to cast her net over this growing commerce, and draw it all into her own ports. By several statutes, successively enacted, and frequently referred to in our colonial history as the Acts of Trade, the first of which was passed in the year 1660, all foreigners were prohibited from importing merchandise into the colonies; the exportation of certain "enumerated commodities," the produce of the colonies, was confined to countries belonging to the British crown; the exportation of commodities not enumerated was confined to the same countries or to ports south of Cape Finisterre; no commodity could be imported into the colonies except in English ships and from English ports; and duties were required to be paid on commodities exported from one colony to another. The navigation act, passed in 1650, had prohibited foreign vessels from bringing any commodities to England except such as were the produce of the country to which the vessel belonged.

Therefore, though the Dutch might be willing, as they actually were, to carry commodities to and from the colonies for less freight than the English, yet they were not permitted to do it; and however high might be the price of the enumerated commodities, of which tobacco was one, in the markets of Europe, still the colonists could sell them only in England; and however low might be the price, in European markets, of such articles as the colonists were obliged to procure from

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