It was extremely mortifying to him to perceive that his greatest exertions and most assiduous services were underrated; his devotedness to their welfare unacknowledged; and his sacrifices and exposures that he might establish them in security and peace, were not merely depreciated, but miscalled and dishonored. While he was zealously engaged in strengthening the Colony, by locating large accessions of brave and industrious settlers on the frontiers, and erecting forts, and supplying them with troops and ammunition, the people who were "sitting under their own vines and fig-trees, with none to molest or make them afraid," and who had been best and longest provided for, were insensible to the hardships and dangers to which others were exposed; and, cavilling at the circumstances in which they were placed, complained as if he must be personally accountable for certain restrictions in the plan of settlement, and subsequent financial and commercial affairs, to which the Trustees had deemed it proper to subject them; restrictions which might have been submitted to by them with as good a grace as they were by the Saltzburgers at Ebenezer and the Scots at Darien, "who murmured not, neither were unthankful." In fact, it was very apparent, that by their indolence and improvidence these dissatisfied ones had brought upon themselves the chief of the evils which they suffered. Their allegations, therefore, were unreasonable, and the disposition which dictated them criminally ungrateful. But Oglethorpe, instead of reproaching the discontented for their ingratitude, and the murmurers for their unkind imputations, stifled his own justifiable feelings of displeasure, in the hope that such forbearance would refute the injustice of theirs. Well might the poet exclaim: "What magnanimity!--May ne'er again Unkind returns thy generous ardor chill, Nor causeless censure give thy bosom pain, Nor thankless hearts reward thy good with ill! "But honoring gratitude its column raise, To bear inscriptions of deserved praise; And when through age the record is obscure, A nobler let posterity procure." CHAPTER XIII. Oglethorpe goes to Charlestown, South Carolina, to open his Commission--Comes back to Savannah--Gives encouragement to the Planters--Returns to Frederica--Excursion to Coweta--Forms a Treaty with the Upper Creeks--Receives at Augusta a delegation of the Chickasaws and Cherokees, who complain of having been poisoned by the Traders--On his return to Savannah is informed of Spanish aggressions, and is authorized to make reprisals.