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feet by fourteen, were set up on forks and poles in
regular rows—a tight and convenient shelter for the emigrants.
It was but ten miles from
Frederica to the Scottish settlement at
Darien.
To give heart to them by his presence,
Oglethorpe, in the Highland costume, sailed up the Alatamaha; and all the
Highlanders, as they perceived his approach, assembled, with their plaids, broadswords, targets, and fire-arms, to bid him welcome.
The brave men were pleased that a town was to be settled, and ships to come up, so near them, and also that they now had a communication by land with
Savannah.
The ‘boggy places’ proved to be not quite impassable; ‘two rivers,’ that had no ford, could be crossed by swimming; and trees had been blazed all the way for a ‘horse-road.’
It remained to vindicate the boundaries of
Georgia.
1736 April. Von Reck's Reise Diarium in Urlsperger, i. 846. |
The messenger who, in February, had been despatched to
St. Augustine, had not returned.
Oglethorpe resolved himself to sustain the pretensions of
Great Britain to the territory as far south as the
St. John's, and the
Highlanders volunteered their service.
With their aid,
he explored the channels south of
Frederica; and on the island to which Tomo-chichi gave the name of
Cumberland, he marked out a fort to be called St. Andrew's. But
Oglethorpe still pressed forward to the south.
Passing
Amelia Island, and claiming the
St. John's River as the southern boundary of the territory possessed by the
Indian subjects of
England at the time of the treaty at
Utrecht, on the southern extremity of the island at the entrance of that stream, where myrtles and palmettoes abounded, and wild grape vines, climbing to the summit of trees, formed as beautiful
Von Reck, in Urlsperger i. 848 |
walks as art could have designed, he planted the
Fort St. George, as the defence of the
British frontier.
