Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

6 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
in all lands: for the gentle Salzburgers, for the pious Moravians,
for the thrifty Jews. In no sense of the word, therefore, was Georgia
a colony of jail-birds but a colony of choice spirits gathered from every
part of Europe, a colony whose population was, so to speak, 'sifted
through a fine sieve and safeguarded in every way from the contami
nating influence of vicious elements. Indeed, there was no other colony
to whose choice of members the selective process was more rigorously
applied. These debtor colonists, to quote an eminent authority, were
'' not the depraved who were suffering confinement as a punishment for
crime; not felons who awaited the approach of darker days when graver
sentences were to be endured; not the dishonest, who hoped by submis
sion to temporary imprisonment to weary out creditors and emerge with
fraudulently acquired gains still concealed; but the honestly unfortu
nate. '' * Better protected, therefore, from contaminating contact with
vicious characters, better circumstanced than any other colony for the
upbuilding of a commonwealth committed to high, unselfish and noble
ends, was the colony founded by Oglethorpe.
These great outstanding facts of Georgia's history will be more fully
discussed in succeeding chapters. Here, they are detached from the
strictly logical connection in which they belong and are placed conspicu
ously in the foreground of this work for the mere sake of emphasis.
Fundamental to much of what will follow, we enumerate them here, so
that when other facts, relatively much less important, are elsewhere
stressed, these will not be dwarfed in comparison but will be kept vividly
in mind by the reader.
The authentic history of Georgia begins with Oglethorpe's humane'
enterprise to found an asylum in the new world for oppressed debtors.
But traditions point to European visitors who came at least two cen
turies earlier. Some of these only skirted the shores of Georgia, while
others penetrated far into the wilderness. Before we begin to deal with
established facts, let us linger for a brief season in this border land of
legend and see what matters of curious interest are disclosed in its dim
twilights. Granting how prone the mind is to invest distant times and
remote localities with fanciful creations, there may nevertheless be a
world of truth in the unwritten lore which has come down to us from
prehistoric days. At least, there is much to enchain the interest, to
regale the imagination and to beguile the tedium of dull hours. Back
of the musty chronicles of England, lies a realm of myth, peopled by the
valiant knights of King Arthur; and behind the historic records of
Greece we find the heroes of Homer. Some of the legends which have
drifted down to us from prehistoric times in Georgia will compare in
fascinating 'elements of romance with any of these: so let us not shrink,
therefore, from an age of fable, even though the historian's task be
ours; but entering boldly into this arcadian realm let us seek to ascer
tain what light it can throw upon the true history to which it forms an
introduction.
When Columbus discovered - the Bahama Islands in 1492 he was
*"History of Georgia," Chas. C. Jones, Jr., Vol. I, p. 85.