Fortunately it was seven years before the war with Spain came which every one had known from the first to be inevitable; and by that time the little colony was ready enough. Georgia’s territory stretched upon the coast from the Savannah to the Altamaha, and from the coast ran back, west and northwest, to the sources of those rivers; from their sources due westward “to the South Seas.” Savannah was thus planted at the very borders of South Carolina. New settlers were placed, as they came, some in Savannah, many by the upper reaches of the river. The Highlanders had their post of danger and honor upon the Altamaha; and before war came new settlers, additional arms and stores, and serviceable fortifications had been placed at St. Simon’s Island at the mouth of the Altamaha. Every settlement was in some sort a fortified military post. The first settlers had been drilled in arms by sergeants of the Royal Guards in London every day between the time of their assembling and the time of their departure. Arms and ammunition were as abundant almost as agricultural tools and food stores in the cargoes carried out. Negro slavery was forbidden in the colony, because it was no small part of Oglethorpe’s purpose in founding it to thrust a solid wedge of free settlers between Carolina and the country to the south, and close the border to fugitive slaves. Neither could any liquor be brought in. It was designed that the life of the settlements should be touched with something of the rigor of military discipline; and so long as Oglethorpe himself was at hand laws were respected and obeyed, rigid and unacceptable though they were; for he was a born ruler of men. [Illustration: ALEXANDER HAMILTON]