. . .
And the sight of the faire medows is a pleasure not able to be expressed
with tongue; full of Hernes, Curlues, Bitters, Mallards, Egrepths,
Woodcocks, and all other kind of small birds; with Harts, Hindes, Buckes,
wilde Swine, and all other kindes of wilde beastes, as we perceived well,
both by their footing there and . . . their crie and roaring in the
night."* This is the country of the liveoak and the magnolia, the gray,
swinging moss and the yellow jessamine, the chameleon and the mockingbird.
* Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America", vol. V, p. 357.
The Savannah and Altamaha rivers and the wide and deep lands between fell
in that grant of Charles II's to the eight Lords Proprietors of
Carolina -- Albemarle, Clarendon, and the rest. But this region remained as
yet unpeopled save by copperhued folk. True, after the "American Treaty" of
1670 between England and Spain, the English built a small fort upon
Cumberland Island, south of the Altamaha, and presently another Fort
George -- to the northwest of the first, at the confluence of the rivers
Oconee and Oemulgee. There were, however, no true colonists between the
Savannah and the Altamaha.
In the year 1717 -- the year after Spotswood's Expedition -- the Carolina
Proprietaries granted to one Sir Robert Mountgomery all the land between
the rivers Savannah and Altamaha, "with proper jurisdictions, privileges,
prerogatives, and franchises." The arrangement was feudal enough.
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