The most important commercial acquisition of Pensacola by that tory immigration was William Panton, the senior of the firm of Panton, Leslie & Co., a Scotch house of great wealth and extensive commercial relations. They had an establishment in London, with branches in the West India Islands. During the English dominion in Florida they established themselves in St. Augustine; later, during Governor Chester’s administration, at Pensacola, and afterwards, at Mobile. Other merchants also came to Pensacola about the same time, attracted principally by the heavy disbursements of the government. But these expenditures were not the attraction to the Scotchmen. Their object was to grasp the Indian trade of West Florida. A building which they erected with a wharf in front of it is still standing, or at least, its solid brick walls are now those of the hospital of Dr. James Herron, whose dwelling house stands on the site of the Council Chamber of Fort George. In that building was carried on a business which grew steadily from year to year during the British dominion, and afterwards attained great magnitude under Spanish rule, as we shall have occasion to notice in a future page. In building up that business, Panton had a most able and influential coadjutor in General Alexander McGillivray, whom we lately saw in the Council Chamber of Fort George. Through him their business comprehended not only West Florida, but extended to and even beyond the Tennessee river. In perfect security, their long lines of pack horses went to and fro in that great stretch of country, carrying all the supplies the Indians needed, and bringing back skins, peltry, bees-wax, honey, dried venison, and whatever else their savage customers would provide for barter. Furs were a large item of that traffic, for the beaver in those days abounded throughout West Florida, and was found even in the vicinity of Pensacola. One of their ponds, still existing on Carpenter’s Creek, four miles from the town, is suggestive of an instructive comparison between the fruits of the life-work of its humble constructors, and those of the twenty years rule, of a mighty monarch. Of the British dominion of his Majesty George III., in this part of Florida, the millions of treasure expended, and the thousands of lives sacrificed to establish and maintain it, there exists no memorial, or result, except a fast disappearing bank of sand on the site of Fort George. From that barren outcome of such a vast expenditure of human life and money, we turn with a blush for the vanity and folly of man, to contemplate that little pool fringed with fairy candles,[16] where the water lilies bloom, and the trout and perch flash in the sunlight, as the memento of a perished race, whose humble labors have furnished pastime and food to successive generations of anglers.