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GEOBGIA AND GEORGIANS 117
who visited the place twice, expected it to become the metropolis of Georgia. There
was no commercial intercourse allowed except through licensed traders; warehouses
were constructed in which were stored goods suited for barter with the natives; and
it was not long before the Indians began to come to Augusta in large numbers from
the most distant stretches of the wilderness.
In 1739, Oglethorpe himself visited the settlement. It was on his return trip to
Savannah, after the famous conference with the Indians at Goweta Town, and, ex
hausted with his long journey across tlie province, lie sought repose in Augusta,
where he was the recipient of marked attention from the inhabitants. In 17G3, an
important gathering was held in Augusta called the Congress of the Five Indian
Nations, to which 700 savages came for the purpose of meeting the governors of
Virginia, of North Carolina, of South Carolina, and of Georgia. We are told by an
early chronicler that the congress adjourned under a salute from the guns of Fort
Augusta, and there was doubtless some method in the compliment of Governor Wright
when he ordered the salute to bo fired. It gave the Indians something to remember.
It sounded a note of warning, and the moral effect was fine. Says Doctor Williams,
a former rector of St. Paul's, on the occasion when the site was marked by the
Colonial Dames:* "Fort Augusta discharged the very highest functions for which
military armaments are intended. It kept the peace throughout the whole Colonial
time, up to the breaking out of the Revolution and, indeed, until 1781. It fulfilled
its first purpose—a mission of peace. The bloody time, the time of tragedy, came
later, vrtiea "we toot those guns and turned them against one another.''
On the ruins, of the old fort, in 1901, the Colonial Dames erected the handsome
memorial tribute which today marks the historic spot. It is a cross of Celtic design,
rough-hewn, perhaps twelve feet in. height and mounted upon a base of granite to
match the superstructure. At the base rests an old cannon, one of the ancient
guns which formerly stood upon the parapets. It is difficult to conceive of anything
more appropriate. The purpose for which the fort was built, in part at least, was
to protect the house of worship over which it kept grim and silent watch and around
which clustered the rnde cabins of the settlers. Both the religious and the primitive
character of the little frontier town are charmingly commemorated. Inscribed on
the side nearest the chureli are the following words:
This stone marks the site of the Colonial Fort Augusta, built
by order of General Oglethorpe and the trustees in 1736 and known
during the Revolution as Fort Cornwallis.
St. Paul's Church was built in 1750 under a curtain of this fort. On the opposite,
side, facing the river, the inscription reads:
Erected by the Georgia Society of Colonial Dames of America,
November, 1901. Virtues majorum felice conservant.
Doctor Williams, in speaking of the old cannon at the base of the monument
said: "To my mind, it is the most interesting relic in Augusta. It is all that is
left of the old fort—the one thing which was here in 1736 and is here today; the
one thing which puts us in actual touch with Oglethorpe, for it was here when he
came on his visit, in 1739, and when he wrote a letter in his own hand, dated 'Fort
Augusta, in Georgia.' " There were originally eight guns mounted upon the walls
of the fort, all of which were bought in England by Oglethorpe himself. Yet this
one, dismounted, spiked, rusting from long disuse and old age, is the sole survivor
of the early frontier days when Fort Augusta first stood upon the bluff.
HISTORIC OLD ST. PAUL'S.—Opposite one of the curtains of the fort, in 1750,
fourteen years after the establishment of the garrison, were laid the foundations
of the most ancient edifice in Augusta: historic old St. Paul's. The present house
of worship is not the original structure. Two others have preceded it; but around
this ancient land-mark cluster the memories of a hundred eventful years. Moreover,
it occupies the site of the earliest rude building in which religious services were
first held, according to the impressive ritual of the Church of England; and,
standing in the very heart of the bustling city, it carries the imagination back to
* Story of St. Paul 's Parish, a pamphlet, by Rev. Chauncey C. Williams, D. D.