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The tract of country lying between the rivers Savanna and Alatamaha being unoccupied by Europeans, a company was formed for the humane purpose of transplanting into this wilderness, the suffering poor of the mother country.
The Province of Georgia is watered by three great rivers, which rise in the mountains, namely, the Alatamaha, the Ogechee, and the Savannah; the last of which is navigable six hundred miles for canoes, and three hundred miles for boats. The British dominions are divided from the Spanish Florida by a noble river called St. John's.
General Oglethorpe, who was at Simons's fort, fired at them as they passed the sound, which the Spaniards returned from their ships, and proceeded up the river Alatamaha, out of the reach of his guns. There the enemy having hoisted a red flag at the mizen top-mast-head of the largest ship, landed their forces upon the island, and erected a battery, with twenty eighteen pounders mounted on it.
You see me returned from Gaston's Bluff, now called Hamilton's Bluff, a London merchant, partner of Mr. Couper. We were four in the carriage; the three ladies and myself. Mr. Morse informs you that this island is forty-five miles long, and that it lies north of the mouth Altamaha, commonly spelled Alatamaha. It is, in fact, twelve and a half miles in length, and lies southeast of that river.
He erected one fort on the Savanna, at Augusta, and another on an island of the Alatamaha, called Frederica, for defence against the Indians and the inhabitants of Florida.
After this, the General paid a visit to the Highlanders, at their settlement called "the Darien," a distance of sixteen miles on the northern branch of the Alatamaha. He found them under arms, in their uniform of plaid, equipped with broad swords, targets, and muskets; in which they made a fine appearance.
To prevent negroes escaping to the Spanish territories, and overawe the Indians under the Spanish juridiction, the Carolineans had built a fort on the forks of the river Alatamaha, and supported a small garrison in it.
A traveller in Louisiana in 1796 speaks of the cacao-tree among others as "covering with delightful shade the shores of the Mississippi," and on the banks of the Alatamaha in Georgia, but it is not cultivated so far north. At the present day the West India Islands rival the South American Continent in providing cocoa from the New World.
At another place, called Frederica, on an island nigh the mouth of the river Alatamaha, another fort, with four regular bastions, was erected, and several pieces of cannon were mounted on it. Ten miles nearer the sea a battery was raised, commanding the entrance into the sound, through which all ships of force must come that might be sent against Frederica.
In the southern divisions of the province lies the town of Frederica, with its district, where there is a court with three bailiffs and a recorder. It lies on one side of the branches of the Alatamaha. There is, also, the town of Darien, upon the same river, and several forts upon the proper passes, some of four bastions, some are only redoubts.
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