Thus ended this affair, one of the most remarkable in its outcome of any in the military history of the United States. For fifteen days General Oglethorpe, with little over six hundred men and two armed vessels, had baffled the Spanish general with fifty-six ships and five thousand men, defeating him in every encounter in the field, and at length, by an ingenious stratagem, compelling him to retreat with the loss of several ships and much of his provisions, munitions, and artillery. In all our colonial history there is nothing to match this repulse of such a formidable force by a mere handful of men. It had the effect of saving Georgia, and perhaps Carolina, from falling into the hands of the Spanish. From that time forward Spain made no effort to invade the English colonies. The sole hostile action of the Spaniards of Florida was to inspire the Indians of that peninsula to make raids in Georgia, and this annoyance led in the end to the loss of Florida by Spain.
A BOY'S WORKING HOLIDAY IN THE WILDWOOD.
We wish to say something here about a curious old man who lived in Virginia when George Washington was a boy, and who was wise enough to see that young Washington was anything but a common boy. This man was an English nobleman named Lord Fairfax. As the nobles of England were not in the habit of coming to the colonies, except as governors, we must tell what brought this one across the sea.
It happened in this way. His grandfather, Lord Culpeper, had at one time been governor of Virginia, and, like some other governors, had taken care to feather his nest. Seeing how rich the land was between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, when he went home he asked the king to give him all this land, and the king, Charles II., in his good easy way of giving away what did not belong to him, readily consented, without troubling himself about the rights of the people who lived on the land. A great and valuable estate it was. Not many dwelt on it, and Lord Culpeper promised to have it settled and cultivated, but we cannot say that he troubled himself much about doing so.
When old Culpeper died the Virginia land went to his daughter, and from her it descended to her son, Lord Fairfax, who sent out his cousin, William Fairfax, to look after his great estate, which covered a whole broad county in the wilderness, and counties in those days were often very large. Lord Fairfax was not much concerned about the American wildwood. He was one of the fashionable young men in London society, and something of an author, too, for he helped the famous Addison by writing some papers for the "Spectator."
But noblemen, like common men, are liable to fall in love, and this Lord Fairfax did. He became engaged to be married to a handsome young lady; but she proved to be less faithful than pretty, and when a nobleman of higher rank asked her to marry him, she threw her first lover aside and gave herself to the richer one.
This was a bitter blow to Lord Fairfax. He went to his country home and dwelt there in deep distress, vowing that all women were false-hearted and that he would never marry any of them. And he never did. Even his country home was not solitary enough for the broken-hearted lover, so he resolved to cross the ocean and seek a new home in his wilderness land in America. It was this that brought him to Virginia, where he went to live at his cousin's fine mansion called Belvoir, a place not far away from the Washington estate of Mount Vernon.
Lord Fairfax was a middle-aged man at that time, a tall, gaunt, near-sighted personage, who spent much of his time in hunting, of which he was very fond. And his favorite companion in these hunting excursions was young George Washington, then a fine, fresh, active boy of fourteen, who dearly loved outdoor life. There was a strong contrast between the old lord and the youthful Virginian, but they soon became close friends, riding out fox-hunting together and growing intimate in other ways.