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Simons, an island near the north mouth of the Alatamaha river, fifteen miles in length, and from two to four in breadth. Here the working men and carpenters who came in the sloop and long boats, disembarked, and were immediately set to work. Oglethorpe not only directed and superintended, but actually assisted in the labors.
Those unexpected impediments, which always embarrass military movements conducted by men without experience, having delayed the arrival of his northern troops, Oglethorpe entered Florida at the head of his own regiment, aided by a party of Indians; and invested Diego, a small fort about twenty-five miles from St. Augustine, which capitulated after a short resistance.
A letter from Oglethorpe, dated Savannah March 12th, 1732-3, gives the following additional information. "This Province is much larger than we thought, being one hundred and twenty miles from this river to the Alatamaha. This river has a very long course, and a great trade is carried on by it to the Indians, there having above twelve trading boats passed since I have been here.
If any one were sick he visited him, and when they quarreled they came to him to settle their disputes. Yet he kept strict discipline and allowed neither drinking nor swearing. The work of the colony went on apace. About six weeks after the settlers landed some of the settlers from Charleston came to visit Oglethorpe, and they were astonished to find how quickly things had got on.
Almost from the days of Oglethorpe, there were two parties in the Creek nation, and the issue on which they divided was the treatment that should be accorded to the whites. The party division was geographical as well as political.
The Governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, addressed letters to Oglethorpe, "congratulating him upon the important services rendered to the Colonies; and assuring him of the interest which they felt in the honor he had acquired by his indefatigable exertions, constant exposure, extraordinary courage, and unequalled military conduct; and offering their humble thanks to the Supreme Governor of nations for placing the fate of the Southern Colonies under the direction of a General so well qualified for the important trust."
On this journey Hawker made a long speech to his friend, and at the end of it he exclaimed: "And now do you think she cares so much for Oglethorpe? Why, she as good as told me that he was only a very great friend." Hollanden wagged his head dubiously. "What a woman says doesn't amount to shucks. It's the way she says it that's what counts.
Long white hair and beard, spectacles with great round, staring glasses, a broad-brimmed hat of ante-Revolutionary pattern, clothes that had apparently descended to him from some ancestor who had come over with Oglethorpe, and a two-handed staff with a head of buckhorn, upon which he leaned as old peasants do in plays, formed such an image as recalled to me the picture of the old man in the illustrations in "The Dairyman's Daughter."
But Oglethorpe, instead of reproaching the discontented for their ingratitude, and the murmurers for their unkind imputations, stifled his own justifiable feelings of displeasure, in the hope that such forbearance would refute the injustice of theirs. Well might the poet exclaim: "What magnanimity!
Others were discontented for far better reasons: because they had no share in the government, and because the land laws were bad. Oglethorpe, too, had his own troubles, for he had spent so much on the colony that he was deeply in debt. So, having ruled for twelve years, he went home, and although be lived to a great old age, he never returned again to Georgia.
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