first year after their arrival. When James Oglethorpe took possession of
this wilderness, the whole was an immense thick forest, excepting
savannas, which are natural plains where no trees grow, and a few Indian
fields, where the savages planted maize for their subsistence. In the
province there were the same wild animals, fishes, reptiles and insects,
which were found in Carolina. The country in the maritime parts was
likewise a spacious plain, covered with pine trees, where the lands were
barren and sandy; and with narrow slips of oaks, hickory, cypress, cane,
&c. where the lands were of a better quality. Rains, thunder-storms,
hurricanes, and whirlwinds, were equally frequent in the one province as
in the other. Little difference could be perceived in the soil, which in
both was barren or swampy; and the same diseases were common to both. The
lands being covered with wood, through which the sea-breezes could not
penetrate, there was little agitation in the air, which at some seasons
was thick, heavy and foggy, and at others clear, close, and suffocating,
both which are very pernicious to health. The air of the swampy land was
pregnant with innumerable noxious qualities, insomuch that a more
unwholesome climate was not perhaps to be found in the universe. The poor
settlers considered this howling wilderness to which they were brought,
to have been designed by nature rather for the habitation of wild beasts
than human creatures. They found that diseases, or even misfortunes were
in effect equally fatal: for though neither of them might prove mortal,
yet either would disable them from living, and reduce them to a state in
which they might more properly be said to perish than to die.

Nothing has retarded the progress and improvement of these southern
settlements more than the inattention shewn to the natural productions of
the soil, and the preference which has commonly been given to articles
transplanted from Europe. Over the whole world different articles of
produce are suited to different soils and climates. As Georgia lay so