The growing importance of the English colonies on the north, and the aggressive and irritable character of their settlers, gave rise at an early period of their existence to bitter feelings between them and their more southern neighbors, manifested by a series of attacks and reprisals on both sides, kept alive almost continually till the cession to England in 1763. So much did the Carolinians think themselves aggrieved, that as early as 1702, Colonel Moore, then governor of the province, made an impotent and ill-advised attempt to destroy St. Augustine; for which valorous undertaking his associates thought he deserved the fools-cap, rather than the laurel crown. An account of his Successes,[64] or more properly Misfortunes, published in England the same year; is of great rarity and has never come under my notice. Of his subsequent expedition, undertaken in the winter of 1703-4, for the purpose of wiping away the stigma incurred by his dastardly retreat, so-called, from St. Augustine, we have a partial account in a letter from his own pen to Sir Nathaniel Johnson, his successor in the gubernatorial post. It was published the next May in the Boston News, and has been reprinted by Carroll in his Historical Collections. The precise military force in Florida at this time may be learned from the instructions given to Don Josef de Zuñiga, Governor-General in 1703, preserved by Barcia. Some years afterwards Captain T. Nairns, an Englishman, accompanied a band of Yemassees on a slave hunting expedition to the peninsula. He kept a journal and took draughts on the road, both of which were in the possession of Herman Moll,[65] but they were probably never published, nor does this distinguished geographer mention them in any of his writings on his favorite science. Governor Oglethorpe renewed these hostile demonstrations with vigor. His policy, exciting as it did much odium from one party and some discussion in the mother country, gave occasion to the publication of several pamphlets. Those that more particularly refer to his expedition against the Spanish, are three in number,[66] and, together with his own letters to his patrons, the Duke of Newcastle and Earl of Oxford,[67] and those of Captain McIntosh, leader of the Highlanders, and for some time a captive in Spain, which are still preserved in manuscript in the Library of the Georgia Historical Society,[68] furnish abundant information on the English side of the question; while the correspondence of Manuel de Montiano, Captain-General of Florida, extending over the years 1737-40, a part of which has been published by Captain Sprague[69] and Mr. Fairbanks,[70] but the greater portion still remaining inedited in the archives of St. Augustine, offers a full exposition of the views of their opponents.