152. Oglethorpe and the Spaniards. Meanwhile the colony, feeble as it was in numbers, served as an effectual barrier against the encroachments of the Spaniards. Oglethorpe had strengthened the southern frontier with forts, and had secured the friendship of several Indian tribes. In 1740 he led an expedition against the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine (§ 23). In retaliation the Spaniards (1742) besieged Frederica (§ 149); but the fort held out against the attack.

General Oglethorpe had valiantly defended the colony, but the colonists were greatly dissatisfied with the government by the trustees, and were constantly sending complaints to London. The General went to England, and refuted these charges. He never returned to the colony, and the trustees appointed a President and council of four to administer the affairs of the province, but the discontent remained unabated. The people of Georgia felt able to take care of their own interests, and were weary of the paternal government by which those in authority kept them in leading-strings.

In 1751 the trustees surrendered their charter to the Crown. They had found that the profit did not equal the expense, and they gladly gave up their well-meant but badly managed experiment.

153. Georgia becomes a royal province; American rights. By the surrender of the charter, Georgia now (1752) became a royal province, and so continued until the Revolution. This was a decided change for the better, since, as in the other royal provinces, an Assembly was created, and the people thus obtained a voice in the Government. Even then after twenty years' existence the colony had gained so little in numbers that the entire population, including slaves, was estimated at less than five thousand.34

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At the opening of the War for Independence, the patriot party in Georgia took a firm stand for "American rights." When the port of Boston was closed as a punishment for the destruction of the taxed tea, the people of Georgia generously

sent nearly six hundred barrels of rice to feed the suffering poor of the Massachusetts capital. 35 After the battles of Lexington and Concord, the citizens of Savannah seized a quantity of the King's powder which was stored there. Part of it they retained for themselves; tradition says that they sent the remainder to the Continental Army at Cambridge. It arrived in season for effectual use at the battle of Bunker Hill.3

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General Oglethorpe must have heard of these proceedings with no small interest. He lived to see Georgia take its place among the United States, and to see England sign a treaty of peace, recognizing the independence of the American nation.35

154. Summary.- Georgia, the last of the thirteen colonies, was founded (1733) for purposes of charity, and as a refuge for the oppressed Protestants of Germany. For a time its growth was hampered by vexatious regulations, and by laws restricting trade and excluding slavery. In 1751 Georgia became a royal province, and the people through their Assembly obtained a voice in the Government. At the beginning of the Revolution, the patriot party in Georgia took an active part in aiding Massachusetts, and in furnishing powder for the Continental Army.

EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.

155. The French in the West; the French and the Indians; Catholic missions. While the English colonists were getting possession of the strip of Atlantic coast east of the Alleghanies, the French in Canada were rapidly pushing westward.

The fact that powerful Indian tribes held that unknown region greatly facilitated the progress of the French. Champlain, the "Father of New France," first conceived the idea of acquiring possession of the western country by conciliating the natives. With the exception of his fatal mistake of entering into an alliance with the Canadian Indians against the Iroquois of New York, he was successful in his plans. The English did not understand the Indian character; the French endeavored to

adapt themselves to the Red Man's ways, and so won his lasting friendship. This they could do the more readily as their purpose at the outset was not, like the English, to plant colonies, but to establish fur-trading posts, which, of course, did not interfere with the Indian's control of the forest.353

Champlain induced a number of Franciscan friars to come over as missionaries (1615), and begin the work of converting the savages. He meant to save the heathen, and at the same

time save the cause of France in the New World.

Taking his life in his hands, one of these gray-robed friars leaving Quebec (1615) resolutely turned his face toward the west, and struck out into the pathless wilderness. He reached Lake Huron, and there set up his altar in an Indian wigwam on the shore of Thunder Bay,354

Ten years later (1625) the Jesuit Fathers in France came over to help the Franciscans. The Jesuits infused new life into the undertaking. Cardinal Richelieu, then the power behind the throne, was determined that no emigrants but French Catholics should land in Canada. The Jesuits, on their side, resolved to win over the entire native population of New France to the faith they preached.

These "peaceful soldiers of the cross" braved hunger, cold, torture, and death.355 Long before William Penn's band of colonists had built the first log-cabin on the banks of the Delaware, the French priests - or "Black Gowns," as the Indians called them-had planted missions at Mackinaw, Sault Ste. Marie, Green Bay, and at Kaskaskia on the Illinois. They were the first white men to discover the salt springs of Onondaga, New York, and the copper mines of Lake Superior. They, too, first described and mapped out the upper Great Lakes and the streams flowing into them.

156. Marquette and Joliet discover the Mississippi (1673). - The Indians told the Jesuits that there was an immense river in the west which flowed southward to an unknown distance. When Count Frontenac ($66) became Governor of Canada

(1672), he sent Father Marquette accompanied by Joliet, a noted fur-trader, to discover the river. The French hoped that it emptied into the Gulf of California, and that it would open the long-sought way across the continent to the Pacific.

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Starting from the Straits of Mackinaw (1673) Marquette and Joliet paddled their birch-bark canoes to Green Bay. From that point they laboriously pushed their way up the rapids of the Fox River, --" a way," said the good Father, "as hard as the path to Heaven." At Portage they left the Fox, and, carrying their canoes across the country a short distance, embarked on the Wisconsin. For a week they floated down with the current, until on a beautiful day in June, says Marquette, "we safely entered the Mississippi with a joy that I cannot express."

157. Voyage down the Mississippi, and return. Down that great river they glided day after day. They passed the mouth of the Illinois, the castellated rocks, the painted limestone cliffs, and the roaring flood of the muddy Missouri.

Still keeping on, Marquette and Joliet reached the mouth of the placid Ohio, and two days later passed the point where De Soto (§ 20) had crossed the Mississippi more than a hundred and thirty years before. Thence moving southward in the shadow of forests of cottonwood, magnolia, and cypress, they came to the mouth of the Arkansas. There the natives warned them that they would encounter hostile tribes if they ventured farther down the stream.

The explorers now turned back, and, under the fierce rays of a July sun, began the exhausting toil of pushing their canoes up stream against the powerful current. In time they reached a tributary of the Illinois, and crossing over to the Chicago River, entered the waters of Lake Michigan, where the greatest city of the Northwest now stands.3

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158. La Salle's expedition to the Illinois country (167980). Six years later (1679) La Salle, the commander of Fort Frontenac (now Kingston), set out to secure the possession of