[10] It was during these years of peace that Georgia was planted. The Spaniards at St. Augustine considered this an intrusion into their territory, and protested vigorously when Oglethorpe established a line of military posts from the Altamaha to the St. Johns River. When word came that Great Britain and Spain were at war, Oglethorpe, aided by British ships, (1740) attacked St. Augustine. He failed to capture the city, and the Spaniards (1742) invaded Georgia. Oglethorpe, though greatly outnumbered, made a gallant defense, forced the Spaniards to withdraw, and (1743) a second time attacked St. Augustine, but failed to take it.
[11] The expedition was undertaken without authority from the king. The army was a body of raw recruits from the farms, the shops, lumber camps, and fishing villages. The commander—Pepperell—was chosen because of his popularity, and knew no more about attacking a fortress than the humblest man in the ranks. Of cannon suitable to reduce a fortress the army had none. Nevertheless, by dint of hard work and good luck, and largely by means of many cannon captured from the French, the garrison was forced to surrender. Read Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair, Part ii, Chap. vii; also Chaps. viii and ix.
[12] Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 20-34, for a comparison of the French and English colonies in America.
[13] One of these plates was soon found by the Indians and sent to the governor of Pennsylvania. Two more in recent years were found projecting from the banks of the Ohio by boys while bathing or at play.
[14] Among the members of the company were Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, and two brothers of George Washington.
[15] George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at Bridges Creek, in Virginia. At fourteen he thought seriously of going to sea, but became a surveyor, and at sixteen was sent to survey part of the vast estate of Lord Fairfax which lay beyond the Blue Ridge. He lived the life of a frontiersman, slept in tents, in cabins, in the open, and did his work so well that he was made a public surveyor. This position gave him steady occupation for three years, and a knowledge of woodcraft and men that stood him in good stead in time to come. When he was nineteen, his brother Lawrence procured him an appointment as an adjutant general of Virginia with the rank of major, a post he held in October, 1753, when Dinwiddie sent him, accompanied by a famous frontiersman, Christopher Gist, to find the French.
[16] On the way home Washington left his men in charge of the horses and baggage, put on Indian walking dress, and with Christopher Gist set off by the nearest way through the woods on foot. "The following day," says Washington, in his account of the journey, "just after we had passed a place called Murdering town, … we fell in with a party of French Indians, who had lain in wait for us. One of them fired at Mr. Gist or me, not fifteen steps off, but fortunately missed." The next day they came to a river. "There was no way of getting over but on a raft, … but before we were half over we were jammed in the ice…. I put out my setting pole to try and stop the raft that the ice might pass by, when the rapidity of the stream threw it with such force against the pole, that it jerked me out into ten feet of water, but I fortunately saved myself by catching hold of one of the raft logs." They were forced to swim to an island, and next day crossed on the ice. Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 132-136.
[17] The French claimed that Jumonville was the bearer of a dispatch from the commander at the Ohio, that after the Virginians fired twice he made a sign that he was the bearer of a letter, that the firing ceased, that they gathered about him and while he was reading killed him and his companions. Jumonville's death has therefore been called an "assassination" by French writers. The story rested on false statements made by Indians friendly to the French. In reality, there is ample proof that Jumonville made no attempt to deliver any message to Washington.
[Illustration: EASTERN NORTH AMERICA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FRENCH AND
INDIAN WAR.]