The summer retreats established at Jonesville, Flemington, Hinesville, and Dorchester, compassed the depopulation of the old town. Without trade, destitute of communications, and visited more and more each season with fevers, Sunbury, for nearly thirty years, has ceased to exist save in name. Its squares, lots, streets, and lanes have been converted into a corn field. Even the bricks of the ancient chimneys have been carted away. No sails whiten the blue waters of Midway river save those of a miserable little craft employed by its owner in conveying terrapins to Savannah. The old cemetery is so overgrown with trees and brambles that the graves of the dead can scarcely be located after the most diligent search. Fort Morris is enveloped in a wild growth of cedars and myrtle. Academy, churches, market, billiard room, wharves, store-houses, residences, all gone; only the bold Bermuda covered bluff and the beautiful river with the green island slumbering in its embrace to remind us of this lost town. A stranger pausing here would find no trace of the past once full of life and importance, but now existent only in the skeleton memories which redeem place and name from that oblivion which sooner or later is the common lot of all things human. The same bold bluff,—the same broad expanse of marshes stretching onward to the confines of the broad Atlantic,—the same blue outlines of Colonel’s island and the Bryan shore,—the same sea-washed beach of St. Catherine,—the same green island dividing the river as it ebbs and flows with ever restless tide,—the same soft sea-breezes,—the same bright skies,—the same sweet voices and tranquil scene which nature gave and still perpetuates,—but all else how changed! Truly “oblivion is not to be hired.” Blindly scattering her poppy she deals with places as with men, and they become as though they had not been. Strange that a town of such repute, and within the confines of a young and prosperous commonwealth, should have so utterly faded from the face of the earth! “The garden with its arbor—gone, And gone the orchard green; A shattered chimney stands alone, Possessor of the scene.”