A hand-car was sent down to Savannah for another engine, and at six o'clock in the morning we entered that city. I breakfasted at the Pulaski House, a large building fronting upon Johnson Square, amid whose noble trees stands a monument erected by the citizens of Savannah to the memory of General Greene and the Count Pulaski. *
Savannah is pleasantly situated upon a sand-bluff, some forty feet above low-water-mark, sloping toward swamps and savannahs, at a lower altitude in the interior. It is upon the south side of the river, about eighteen miles from the ocean. The city is laid out in rectangles, and has ten public squares. The streets are generally broad and well shaded, some of them with four rows of Pride-of-India trees, which, in summer, add greatly to the beauty of the city and comfort of the inhabitants. With interest in Savannah and suburbs, let us open the interesting pages of its history, and note their teachings respecting Georgia in general, and of the capital in particular, whose foundations were laid by General Oglethorpe.
We have already considered the events which led to the settlement of the Carolinas, within whose charter limits Georgia was originally included, and we will here refer only to the single circumstance connected with the earlier efforts at settlement, which some believe to be well authenticated, namely, that Sir Walter Raleigh, when on his way to the Orinoco, in South America, entered the Savannah River, and upon the bluff where the city now stands stood and talked with the Indian king. ** There are reasonable doubts of the truth of this statement.
As late as 1730, the territory lying between the Savannah and Alatamaha Rivers was entirely uninhabited by white people. On the south the Spaniards held possession, and on the west the French had Louisiana, while the region under consideration, partially filled with powerful Indian tribes, was claimed by Great Britain. To prevent France and Spain from occupying it (for the latter already began to claim territory even north of the Savannah), and as a protection to the Carolina planters against the encroachments of their hostile neighbors, various schemes of emigration thither were proposed, but without being effected. Finally, in 1729, General James Oglethorpe, a valorous soldier and humane Christian, then a member of Parliament, made a proposition in that body for the founding of a colony to be composed of poor persons who were confined for debt and minor offenses in the prisons
* In March, 1825, at a meeting of the citizens of Savannah, it was determined to take the occasion of the expected visit of General La Fayette to that city to lay the corner-stones of two monuments, one to the memory of Greene, in Johnson Square; the other in memory of Pulaski, in Chippewa Square. These corner-stones were accordingly laid by La Fayette on the twenty-first of March, 1825. Some donations were made; and in November, 1826, the State Legislature authorized a lottery, for the purpose of raising $35,000 to complete the monuments. The funds were accumulated very slowly, and it was finally resolved to erect one monument, to be called the "Greene and Pulaski Monument." The structure here delineated is of Georgia marble upon a granite base, and was completed in 1829. The lottery is still in operation, and since this monument was completed has realized a little more than $12,000.—Bancroft's Census and Statistics of Savannah, 1848. The second monument, a beautiful work of art, will soon be erected in Chippewa Square. Launitz, the sculptor, of New York, is intrusted with its construction.
* See M'Calfs History of Georgia, note, i., 34.
Oglethorpe's Colonial Plan.—Charter for Georgia.—First Emigrants.—Interview with the Indian King.
of England. * He instituted an inquiry into their condition, which resulted in the conviction that their situation would be more tolerable in the position of a military colony, acting as a barrier between the Carolinians and their troublesome neighbors, than in the moral contamination and physical miseries of prison life.
