Old Virginia and her neighbours

334 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.English soldierwhose name deserves a very highplace among the heroes of early American hisjamesOgle- ^^ry. Jamcs Oglethorpe, an officer whothorpe.-j^ youth had served with distinctionunder Prince Eugene against the Turks,^ conceivedthe plan of freeing the insolvent debtorswho crowded English prisons by carrying themover to America and establishing a colony whichmight serve as a strong military outpost againstthe Spaniards. The scheme was an opportuneone, as the South Sea Bubble and other wildprojects had ruined hundreds of English families.The land between the Savannah and Altamaharivers, with the strip starting between their twomain sources and running westward to the PacificOcean,^ was made over to a board of trustees,and was named Georgia, in honour of the king,George II, The charter created a kind of proprietarygovernment, but with powers less plenaryand extensive than had been granted to the proprietorsof Maryland, Carolina, and Pennsylvania.^ Boswell has a characteristic anecdote of Oglethorpe, whowas very high-spirited, hut extremely sensible.When a lad ofnineteen or so, he was dining one day with a certain Prince ofWiirtemberg and others, when the insolent prince fillipped a fewdrops of wine into his face. " Here was a nice dilemma. Tehave challenged him instantly might have fixed a quarrelsome'character upon the young soldier ; to have taken no notice of itmight have been considered as cowardice. Oglethorpe, therefore,keeping his eye upon the prince and smiling, . . . said, That ' 'sa good joke, but Ave do it much better in England,' and threw awhole glass of wine in the prince's face. An old general, whosat by, said, ' II a bien fait, mon prince, vous I'avez commence ;and thiis all ended in good humour." Life of Johnson, ed. BirkbeckHill, ii. 180.2 See the charter, in Jones's History of Georgia, i. 90.