hanged on Charleston dock, all his crew keeping him company. A few weeks later Robert Thatch, the famous "Blackbeard," whom all the coast dreaded, went a like just way to death, trapped within Ocracoke Inlet by two stout craft sent against him out of Virginia by Colonel Spotswood. And so, step by step, the purging went on. South Carolina had as capable a governor as Virginia in Robert Johnson; and the work done by these and like men upon the coasts, and by English ships in the West Indies, presently wiped piracy out. By 1730 there was no longer anything for ships to fear on those coasts save the Navigation Acts and stress of sea weather.

It was a long coast, and it necessarily took a long time to carry law and order into every bay and inlet. But every year brought increase of strength to the colonies, and with increase of strength power to rule their coasts as they chose. Queen Anne's War over, quiet peace descended upon the colonies for almost an entire generation (1712-1740). Except for a flurry of Indian warfare now and again upon the borders, or here and there some petty plot or sudden brawl, quiet reigned, and peaceful progress. Anne, the queen, had died the year after peace was signed (1714); and the next year Louis XIV. followed her, the great king who had so stirred the politics of Europe. An old generation had passed away, and new men and new measures seemed now to change the whole face of affairs. The first George was on the throne, a German, not an English prince, his heart in Hannover; and presently the affairs of England fell into the hands of Sir Robert Walpole, who kept his power for twentyone years (1721-1742), and who conducted the government with the shrewd, hard-headed sense and administrative capacity of a steady country squire, as if governing were a sort of business, demanding, like other businesses, peace and an assured equable order in affairs. It was a time of growth and recuperation, with much to do, but little to record.

The colonies, while it lasted, underwent in many things a slow transformation. Their population grew in numbers not only, but also in variety. By the end of the war there were probably close upon half a million people within their bor

ders, counting slave with free; and with the return of peace there came a quickened increase. New England had lost its old ways of separate and common action as a self-constituted confederacy; and Massachusetts, with her new system of royal governors and a franchise no longer confined to the members of her churches, had lost her leadership. She was losing also her old temper of Puritan thought. It was impossible to keep her population of the single strain of which it had been made up at the first. New elements were added; and new elements brought new ways of life and new beliefs. She was less and less governed by her pulpits; turned more and more to trade for sustenance; welcomed new-comers with less and less scrutiny of their willingness to conform to her ways of thinking; grew less suspicious of change, and more like her neighbors in her ways of progress.

Scots-Irish began to make their appearance in the colony; some of them going to New Hampshire, some remaining in Boston; and they were given a right willing welcome. The war had brought sore burdens of expense and debt upon the people, and these Scots-Irish knew the profitable craft of linen-making, which the Boston people were glad to learn, and use to clothe themselves; for poverty, they declared, "is coming upon us as an armed man." These new immigrants brought with them also the potato, not before used in New England, and very acceptable as an addition to the colony's bill of fare. Small vessels now began to venture out from Cape Cod and Nantucket, moreover, in pursuit of the whales that came to the northern coasts, and it was not long before that daring oceupation began to give promise of wealth and of the building up of a great industry. Population began slowly to spread from the coasts into the forests which lay at the west between the Connecticut and the Hudson. In 1730 a Presbyterian church was opened in Boston,-almost as unmistakable a sign of change as King's Chapel itself with its service after the order of the Church of England.

The middle colonies and the far south saw greater changes than these. South Carolina seemed likely to become as various in her make-up as were New York

and Pennsylvania, with their mixture of races and creeds. Scots-Irish early settled within her borders also; she had already got her full share of Huguenot blood; and there followed, as the new century advanced through the lengthened years of peace, companies of Swiss immigrants, and Germans from the Palatinate. Charleston, however, seemed English enough, and showed a color of aristocracy in her life which no one could fail to note who visited her. Back from the point where the rivers met, where the fortifications stood, and docks to which the ships came, there ran a fine road northward which governor Archdale, that good Quaker, had twenty years ago declared more beautiful and pleasant than any prince in Europe could find to take the open air upon when he drove abroad. From it on either side stretched noble avenues of live-oaks, their strong lines softened by the long drapery of gray moss,-avenues which led to the broad verandas of country residences standing in cool and shadowy groves of stately trees. In summer the odor of jasmine filled the air; and even in winter the winds were soft. It was here that the ruling men of the colony lived, the masters of the nearer plantations,-men bred and cultured after the manner of the Old World. The simpler people, who made the colony various with their differing bloods, lived inland, in the remoter parishes, or near other harbors above or below Charleston port. It was on the nearer plantations round about Charleston that negro slaves most abounded; and there were more negroes by several thousand in the colony than white folk. Of the 16,750 inhabitants of the colony in 1715, 10,500 were slaves. But the whites were numerous enough to give their governors a taste of their quality.

There were well-developed political parties in South Carolina, for all she was so small; and astute and able men to lead them, like Colonel Rhett; and Mr. Nicholas Trott, now on one side and again on the other in the matter of self-govern

ment as against the authority of the proprietors or the crown, but always in a position to make his influence felt. The province practically passed from the proprietors to the crown in 1719, because the people's party determined to be rid of their authority, and ousted their governor; and in 1729 the proprietors for

New Orleans In 1719

mally surrendered their rights. Colonel Francis Nicholson acted as provisional governor while the change was being effected (1719-1725), having been meantime governor of Acadia, which he had taken for the crown. In 1720 he was knighted; and he seems to have acted as soberly in this post in the far south as he had acted in Virginia. He was truculent and whimsical in the north, but in the south his temper seemed eased and his judgment steadied. The change of government in South Carolina was really an earnest of the fact that the people's representatives had won a just and reasonable ascendency in the affairs of the colony; and Sir Francis did not seriously cross them, but served them rather, in the execution of their purposes.

Every colony had its own movements of party. Everywhere the crown desired the colonial assemblies to provide a permanent establishment for the governor, the judges, and the other officers who held the king's commission,- fixed salaries, and a recognized authority to carry out instructions; but everywhere the people's representatives persistently refused to grant either salaries or additional authority which they could not control, in

the interest of their own rights, from session to session. They would vote salaries for only a short period, generally a year at a time; and they steadily denied the right of the crown to extend or vary the jurisdiction of the courts without their assent. Sometimes a governor like Mr. Clarke of New York, long a resident in his colony, and acquainted with its temper and ways of thought, got what he wanted by making generous concessions in matters under his own control; and the judges, whatever their acknowledged jurisdiction, were likely to yield to the royal wishes with some servility: for they were appointed at the king's pleasure, and not for the term of their good behavior, as in England. But power turned, after all, upon what the legislative assemblies did or consented to, and the colonists commonly spoke their minds with fearless freedom. In New York their right to speak their minds had been tested and established in a case which every colony promptly learned of. In 1734 and 1735 one John Peter Zenger, a printer, was brought to trial for the printing of various libellous attacks on the governor and the administration of the colony, attacks which were declared to be highly derogatory to the character of his majesty's government," and to have a tendency" to raise seditions and tumults in the province"; but he was acquitted. The libel was admitted, but the jury deemed it the right of every one to say whatever he thought to be true of the colony's government; and men everywhere noted the verdict.

66

A second negro plot startled New York in 1741, showing itself, as before, in sudden incendiary fires. It was thought

that the slaves had been incited to destroy the town; and there was an uneasy suspicion that these disturbing occurrences were in some way connected with the slave insurrections in the south. Uprisings of the slaves had recently occurred in the West Indies. South Carolina had suffered such an outbreak more than two years before. In 1738 armed insurgent negroes had begun there, in a quiet parish, the execution of a plot of murder and burning which it had taken very prompt and summary action to check and defeat. Such risings were especially ominous where the slaves so outnumbered the whites; and it was known in South Carolina whence the uneasiness of the negroes came. At the south of the province lay the Spanish colonies in Florida. Negroes who could manage to run away from their masters and cross the southern border were made very welcome there; they were set free, and encouraged in every hostile purpose that would rob the English settlements of their peace and safety. Bands of Yamassees wandered there too, eager to avenge themselves as they could for the woful defeat and expulsion they had suffered at the hands of the Carolinians. When bands of negroes, hundreds strong, began their sudden work of burning, plunder, and murder where the quiet Stono runs to the sea, no one doubted whence the impulse came. And though a single rising was easily enough put down, who could be certain that that was the end of the ominous business? No wonder governors at Charleston interested themselves to increase the number of white settlers and make their power of self-defence sure!

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

T

WILIGHT had fallen slowly, but the old post road from C to C― seemed to lengthen interminably as the shadows faded, and night bade fair to find me on the wrong side of the river from my destination. Over to the right lay the tawny Congaree, its course marked by the overshadowing willow and cypress trees; but no living thing greeted my eyes.

The condition of the road was in itself ample explanation of the absence of fellow-travellers, and the scrubby cottonfields which bordered it had long since been deserted by the pickers.

Striking across the forlorn and nearly naked cotton-field, we soon came in sight of a cabin. No sign of life, however, was forth-coming. But behind the house a light still burned among the blackened stones which supported the three legs of an ancient wash-pot.

I ventured a halloo.

From the half-open door of a ramshackle shed near by appeared an old darky, and stood for a moment within the flickering gleam of the red firelight. Raising his hand to seize his white forelock, he made a bow and scrape that bespoke the well-bred African of the old school, and came forward to take my bridle.

He was bent with age and clothed in garments which were hardly more than an apology to the name; barefooted, with the remnant of an old blanket fastened over his shoulders, he was yet a fine type of the straight-featured, chocolate-colored negro, who in the old days compared with his fellows as a thoroughbred to a marsh-tackey.

"Who lives here, daddy?" I asked. "Dey ain' nobody libs heah 'cep' Wellin'ton Stoball an' Miss Toteheap, mahstah-dat's me an' my ole mule een yondah," he replied, motioning toward the shed. "Ef it's a night's res' you's look

in' fo', suh," he continued, divining my need, "I reckon Miz McCullop's, down de road a piece, is de mos' likelies' place roun' heah, suh. I c'n 'mos' show you de chimbleys to de house f'om heah."

Every indication pointed toward the chimneys of Mrs. McCullop as my probable destination for the night, but the old man's manner presented more immediate attractions. Under pretext of having my horse watered, I alighted. He would not allow me to help draw the water from the well, but having finished his task, he made no effort to enter into conversation. Though courteous, he seemed to desire to return to "Miss Toteheap," rather than to cultivate my further acquaintance. But to leave him unquestioned with his mule, his washpot, and his loneliness was more than human inquisitiveness would permit. "Do your own washing?" I asked, nodding toward the wash-pot.

"Dem ain' clo'es. Dem's apples bilin' fo' de mule, suh," he responded. Then suddenly abandoning his reserve, he went on:

"Mahstah, mebbe you c'n he'p me out some 'bout dat mule, suh. Seem like she's mighty low, an' dis de las' chance I got-jes to-night, mahstah. She's layin' yondah een de shed. Ef you ain' 'bleeged to makace, I'll show um to you."

I was certainly under no obligations to make haste, and Wellington, lighting a pine torch at the fire, led the way to the shed in which the patient was reposing.

That Miss Toteheap was no ordinary animal I knew from the intensity of his interest, but I was hardly prepared for the spectacle that greeted my eyes when we entered the shed. An old gray mule lying upon a bed of pine straw, the other half of my companion's blanket spread over as much of her body as its limited proportions would cover, and around her neck a bit of rope, long enough to serve