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The lofty cedar which to Heav'n aspires,
The prince of trees is fuel for their fires.
The sweet palmettaes a new Bacchus yield,
With leaves as ample as the broadest shield.
Under the shadow of whose friendly boughs
They sit carousing where their liquor grows.
Figs there unplanted through the fields do grow,
Such as fierce Cato did the Romans show;
With the rare fruit inviting them to spoil
Carthage, the mistress of so rich a soil.
With candid plantines and the juicy pine,
On choicest melons and sweet grapes they dine,
And with potatoes fat their lusty swine.

The kind spring, which but salutes us here,
Inhabits there and courts them all the year.
Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live,
At once they promise, what at once they give.
So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
Heav'n sure has kept this spot of earth uncurst,
To shew how all things were created first.

The thought of the poet in the last couplet is adopted by the ingenious Dr. Burnet in his theory of the earth, with fine improvements of it. The Dr. seems fully convinced that the temperament of the climate of Bermudas approaches very near to that of the Antediluvian world, in which he fancies that spring and autumn were continual and universal over the face of the earth, till the Almighty (as Milton has it) turned the poles askance. And by physical reasoning he deduces the longevity of the Antediluvians from this happy equality of seasons, uninterrupted by the shocking vicissitude of heat and cold, which tear the human frame asunder. He thinks that a person born in Bermudas, and continuing there all his life-time, has a moral probability of living three hundred years. This conjecture seems to be supported by what we are told in Purchas's Pilgrimage of one of the Indian kings of Florida, who was three hundred years old, and his father was fifty years older, and then living. The father is described as a skeleton covered with skin; his sinews, veins and arteries, and other parts appeared so clearly through his skin, that a man might easily tell and discern them the one from the other. His son shewed five generations descended from himself. It was such a figure as this Indian king, which induced the ancients to feign that Tithonus being very old was changed into a grasshopper.

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Now Georgia is just about the middle of Purchas's Florida. But not to go too far with the poet, theorist, and old historian; it is probable those Indians divided the solar year into two years as the Virginian Indians did. Let us rely upon what we know at this day; it must not be concealed, that in this country, as almost in every new climate, strangers are apt to have a seasoning; an ague, or sort of a fever; but then it is very slight: And for the rest, people very seldom want health here but by intemperance, (which indeed is too common.) And notwithstanding their several skirmishes with the Spaniards and Indians, and that the plague was imported thither in the year one thousand seven hundred and six; yet there are now several aged persons living at Charles Town, who were of that little number that first settled there and hewed down timber above sixty years ago.

By the healthiness of this climate, and some accounts of Spanish expeditions hither in early times, which were vigorously repulsed by great armies of the natives, one would expect to find the country by this time fully peopled with Indians. It is indeed probable that they were much more numerous in those days than they are at present, or else they could not have defended themselves against the Spaniards as they did. But if their numbers were formerly considerable they have since greatly decreased; and that might easily happen in a century, even though the country be naturally fertile and healthy, for the Indians in all the continent of North America, near the Atlantic ocean, have been discovered to have this resemblance in common: They are small tribes of huntsmen, exceedingly apt to make war upon each other, as our five nations of Iroquois beyond New England and New York, have within these forty years driven many other nations from fertile inland countries, of the extent of many millions of acres, and that not without incredible slaughter. Add to which, that these poor creatures, living with hardly any husbandry, or stores of provisions, must perish in heaps if the fruits of the woods, or their hunting should once fail them; one scanty season would infallibly famish whole nations of them. Another great cause of their destruction was the small-pox, the Europeans brought this distemper among them. Now their common cure in all fevers is to sweat plentifully, and then to stop that evacuation at once by plunging instantly into a river. They cannot be per

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suaded to alter this method in the case of the small-pox, and it certainly kills them. Rum also has been a fatal liquor to them, many of them have been inclined to drink it to such an excess as we sometimes hear of at home in the abuse of Geneva, and sometimes they are so little masters of their reason, when intoxicated, as to be too apt to commit murders; but there are many sober men among them who abhor the abuse of this liquor. Thus Mr. Archdale relates, that, when he was governor, he ordered an Indian to be executed, who being drunk with rum had murdered an Indian of another tribe. The king of his tribe came to him and reminded him how often he had warned him of the dangers attending excesses in that liquor, but exhorted him (since death was unavoidable) to die like a man, which the unhappy man performed with firmness and gallantry. I have mentioned this story because a vulgar error prevails, as if the Indians were all addicted to this vice. But to return to the opposition against the Spaniards. It is also probable that many tribes were leagued together in the common cause, and that the Spaniards were thence induced to think the people of this part of the continent much more numerous than in truth they were. It is most certain that the nations of Carolina in our days have exactly answered in all respects the descriptions we have of the inhabitants of Virginia, when we first got footing there in the beginning of the last century. Captain Smith (next to Sir Walter Rawleigh), the most industrious and resolute planter of Virginia in those days, computed that all the tribes in a country much more fertile and little less in extent than England, could not draw into the field above five thousand fighting men, though the tract of land is sufficient to maintain more than ten millions of people.

Sane populus numerabilis, utpote parvus.

HOR.

This is confirmed and illustrated by the well-attested story that one of their little kings instructed his minister, who was coming hither, to number our tribe; the minister, at his arrival, attempted to execute his commission by making notches on a stick, but soon grew tired of his arithmetic, and at his return expressed the multitude of our forefathers by pointing to the stars, and to the fallen leaves of a wood in autumn. And here I cannot omit saying, that it is a policy of consid

erable benefit to our colonies, and an expense well laid out, at proper distances of time to persuade some of the chiefest savages, both for authority and understanding, to visit Great Britain. That awed with the high idea which our metropolis gives them of the grandeur of this empire, and propagating that idea among their tribes, our planters in their several neighborhoods may enjoy uninterrupted peace and commerce with them, and even assistance from them, for at least one generation. Such was the journey of the Irroquois chiefs in the reign of Queen Anne, and such was lately the visit from our Indian neighbors of Carolina. The good effects of these visits are well known to the planters of those colonies respectively, and probably will be felt with pleasure for an age to come.

The description of the Carolina Indians in their present state of nature, is as follows, they are somewhat tawny, occasioned chiefly by oiling their skins, and by exposing themselves naked to the rays of the sun. They are generally straight-bodied, comely in person, quick of apprehension, and great hunters, by which they are not only serviceable by killing deer to procure skins for trade with us, but our people that live in country plantations procure of them the whole deer's flesh, and they bring it many miles for the value of six-pence sterling, and a wild turkey of forty pound weight for the value of two-pence.

CHAPTER III.

Persons reduced to Poverty are not Wealth to the Nation, may be Happy in Georgia, and profitable to England; they are within the Design of the Patent.

SINCE the time that the lords proprietors sold their rights in Carolina to the crown, the Governor there, has been ordered and instructed to assign liberally portions of land to every new planter according to his ability to occupy it; to erect towns and parishes of twenty thousand acres of land in each district; and to grant to each parish the privilege of

* Archd. Description, page 7.

sending two members to the assembly of the province, as soon as one hundred masters of families shall be settled in it. Neither will the planters be confined to the ground first alloted them, their lots are to be augmented as they become able to cultivate a larger quantity. These lands are to be granted in fee-simple under the yearly rent of four-pence for every hundred acres: but this rent is not to be charged for the first ten years; during that time the lands shall be entirely free.

But all this encouragement was not sufficient to people this country, they who can make life tolerable here are willing to stay at home, as it is indeed best for the kingdom that they should, and they who are oppressed by poverty and misfortunes are unable to be at the charges of removing from their miseries. These were the people intended to be relieved, but they were not able to reach the friendly arm extended for their relief, something else must be done, of which more shall be said in a proper place. Let us in the mean time cast our eyes on the multitude of unfortunate people in the kingdom of reputable families, and of liberal or at least, easy education: some undone by guardians, some by law suits, some by accidents in commerce, some by stocks and bubbles, and some by suretyship. But all agree in this one circumstance, that they must either be burthensome to their relations, or betake themselves to little shifts for sustenance, which (it is ten to one) do not answer their purposes, and to which a well educated mind descends with the utmost constraint. What various misfortunes may reduce the rich, the industrious, to the danger of a prison, to a moral certainty of starving! These are the people that may relieve themselves and strengthen Georgia, by resorting thither, and Great Britian by their departure.

I appeal to the recollection of the reader (though he be opulent, though he be noble,) does not his own sphere of acquaintance? (I may venture to ask) does not even his own blood, his set of near relations furnish him with some instances of such persons as have been here described? Must they starve? What honest mind can bear to think it? Must they be fed by the contributions of others? Certainly they must, rather than be suffered to perish. Are these wealth to the nation? Are they not a burthen to themselves, a burthen to their kindred and acquaintance? A burthen to the

whole community?

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