them

The prisons of England were in a wretched condition, and Par Oglethorpe liament appointed General James Oglethorpe to visit them and plans to help report what reforms ought to be made. General Oglethorpe was a kind-hearted man, and after he had seen the sufferings of these people, he could not rest until he had planned some way to relieve them. This is what he planned. He would pay their debts, set them free, and then carry them and their families to America, and give them a chance to try again.

Many rich men helped, the English government helped, and it was only a year before a ship set sail with more than one hundred liberated prisoners and their families on board as emigrants. They were to form a settlement between Charleston and Saint Augustine, for Oglethorpe was a good general as well as a kind, generous man, and he knew that Charleston would welcome a strong settlement to the south as a protection against the Spaniards,

and that the two colonies could stand more firmly together than either alone. The tract of land given to him "in trust for the poor " was called Georgia, for then King George II. was on the throne.

The first settlement was made at Savannah in 1733. Not many years before this time,

the Spaniards of Florida had aroused the Indians to attack South Carolina, and that colony was delighted to have these new neighbors and allies. She gave them cattle, goats, hogs, and rice, besides sending some negroes with them to help build the houses. South

Carolina was not disappointed in the help that she expected to receive from the new colony, for General Oglethorpe led an expedition against the Spaniards, and after that there was no trouble from them.

Oglethorpe had expected to be able to make wine and olive oil, Silk-raising and to produce large quantities of silk, for mulberry-trees,

on whose leaves the silkworms feed, grew wild in Georgia.
When the colony was two years old, the founder made
a visit to England, and carried with him eight pounds
of Georgia silk, which was made into a dress for
the queen. Silk-raising was not a success, however,
one reason being that the raising of rice and indigo
paid much better.

Oglethorpe and his friends were to make the
laws for the colonies for twenty-one years; but
after a little while the settlers were not contented
to be ruled by others. There were two reasons why
they felt that they had a right to complain. One was
that no rum could be brought into the colony, and the
second was that slavery was not allowed. The colonists
said that men needed rum in that climate, and that besides,
they ought to have it to sell to the West Indies. The
climate, it was maintained, required the use of negroes, for the
settlers said they must have workmen who could endure the heat
better than white men.

BRANCH OF OLIVE

The founder and his friends finally granted their requests. Twenty years after the colony was founded, the province was Georgia is given up to given up to the king, and until the Revolution it was ruled by a the king governor whom he appointed. Georgia was the last of the thirteen English colonies that united, only a century and a half after the first one was founded, to free themselves from Great Britain.

SUMMARY.

The Carolinas were granted to several men as a reward for serving the
king. Among their most valuable colonists were the Huguenots.
The chief industry in the northern part was the manufacture of tar and
turpentine; in the southern, the raising of rice and indigo. The wants
of the two colonies were so unlike that the province was finally di-
vided.

General Oglethorpe founded Georgia as a home for "poor debtors."
The settlers were not satisfied with the government of the colony, and at
last it was given up to the king.

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITTEN WORK.

General Oglethorpe tells Parliament about the " poor debtors."
One of the prisoners writes his wife about Oglethorpe's offer.

XIII

THE FRENCH EXPLORATIONS IN AMERICA

CHAMPLAIN'S PICTURE OF QUEBEC
IN 1613

A FEW years before Jamestown was settled, there was in France a brave young sailor who had become a soldier for the time, and was helping to fight some of the French king's battles. His name was Champlain, and he would have been much surprised if any one had told him that some day a lake in America would be named after him.

When the fighting was over, he asked the king's permission to go to America to search for the Northwest Passage. He explored the Saint Lawrence, and on its north shore he noted a rocky pro

ing of

Quebec

montory. "That is the very place for a town," he thought. "The The found. river is narrow here, and a fort with a few men could keep any number of ships from coming up the stream." In 1608 he founded a colony on that very spot, and named it Quebec from the Indian word quebec, a narrow place.

The Iroquois, the fiercest and most savage of all the Indian tribes, lived in what is now the State of New York, and one day the friendly Indians who were north of the Saint Lawrence came to Champlain to beg for his aid against these Iroquois, who were their deadly foes. Champlain agreed to help them. The white men and the red men feasted and smoked and made speeches. Then they paddled up the river and into Lake Champlain. If they had been one month later and had gone a little farther south, they might have met Henry Hudson and his Dutchmen sailing up the Hud

A JESUIT EXPLORER

and the

Iroquois

son. All the men that they thought of meeting were the Iroquois, Champlain and soon the Iroquois came. Champlain's guns won the day, and there was no limit to the devotion of the Indians. To show their affection and gratitude, they gave him the bleeding head of one of their enemies and asked him to present it to his sovereign. This little battle between a few red men in the woods with some white men helping one side was an important event in American history, for ever after this the Iroquois hated the French and were ready to help the English. That is why the French did not venture to found any colonies in New York, although they

explored to the westward, up the Saint Lawrence and about the Great Lakes. They claimed all the land that is drained by the river, and called it New France.

The first explorers were Roman Catholic priests called Jesuits. The Jesuits Champlain said that he would rather convert an Indian than found an empire, and this was the spirit of these priests. Among the hostile Indians they suffered fearful tortures. They were beaten, they were burned, their fingers were cut off with shells joint by joint, and they were put to death in all the agonizing ways that could be invented. Still, even after the Dutch had ransomed one and sent him home, he made his way back again to preach to his tormentors. One Jesuit, when pursued by Iroquois, might easily have made his escape, but hastened back to terrible sufferings because he remembered that some of his Indian converts had not yet been baptized. In all the history of America, there are no heroes more brave, more earnest, and more unselfish than these black-robed missionaries

of the wilderness.

Another class of people who did much to bring the French and the Indians together were the coureurs de bois, or forest rangers. The king's officers demanded so much of the profit on furs that many young men went into the wilderness and traded without the royal permission. Whenever one was caught, he was severely punished; therefore, they went farther and farther away from the

A COUREUR DE BOIS

settlements. Often they married Indian women. Nearly all the English looked down upon the Indians, but the French treated them as equals, and could go among them in safety far from any settlement of whites. After a while the French heard that beyond their forts and missions there was a great river which the Indians called the Mississippi, or "father of waters." Marquette, a Jesuit priest