He was buried at
Temple Farm by Yorktown. On the expedition to Cartagena went one Lawrence
Washington, who named his country seat after the Admiral and whose brother
George many years later was to receive the surrender of Cornwallis and his
army hard by the resting-place of Alexander Spotswood. Colonial Virginia
lies behind us. The era of revolution and statehood beckons us on.
CHAPTER XVI. GEORGIA
Below Charleston in South Carolina, below Cape Fear, below Port Royal, a
great river called the Savannah poured into the sea. Below the Savannah,
past the Ogeechee, sailing south between the sandy islands and the main,
ships came to the mouth of the river Altamaha. Thus far was Carolina. But
below Altamaha the coast and the country inland became debatable, probably
Florida and Spanish, liable at any rate to be claimed as such, and
certainly open to attack from Spanish St. Augustine.
Here lay a stretch of seacoast and country within hailing distance of
semi-tropical lands. It was low and sandy, with innumerable slow-flowing
watercourses, creeks, and inlets from the sea. The back country, running up
to hills and even mountains stuffed with ores, was not known -- though indeed
Spanish adventurers had wandered there and mined for gold. But the lowlands
were warm and dense with trees and wild life. The Huguenot Ribault, making
report of this region years and years before, called it "a fayre coast
stretching of a great length, covered with an infinite number of high and
fayre trees," and he described the land as the "fairest, fruitfullest, and
pleasantest of all the world, abounding in hony, venison, wilde fowle,
forests, woods of all sorts, Palm-trees, Cypresse and Cedars, Bayes ye
highest and greatest; with also the fayrest vines in all the world .
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