On the 22nd of March, 1743, the magazine at Frederica was blown up, to the general alarm and regret of the inhabitants. Although it contained, at the time, three thousand bombs, so well bedded were they, but little damage occurred. A vagabond Irishman was suspected of having fired the magazine.[141] We have two descriptions of Frederica in 1743,—the period of its greatest prosperity and importance,—which we make no apology for transcribing. The first is from the lips of a captain conversant with the appearance and condition of the town. Captain John MacClellan, who had left Georgia on the 31st of January, 1743, on his arrival in England reported the colonists busily engaged in placing themselves in the best posture of defense, in anticipation of a second attack from the Spaniards; that Fort William had been fortified anew with brick work, and that “great numbers of Men were employ’d in compleating the Fortifications at _Frederica_, the Walls whereof are judged strong enough to be Proof against Eighteen-Pound Shot;” that two towers,—one at each corner of the town walls,—capable of holding one hundred men each, and designed to protect the flanks by means of small arms, had been erected; that the men were “full of spirits and unanimous to make a vigorous Defence to the last Drop of Blood;” that General Oglethorpe had been reinforced by two hundred men from Virginia, raised by Major Heron, many of whom were disciplined soldiers from Colonel Gouge’s late regiment, and that thirty horsemen were on their way to Georgia to “recruit the Rangers.”[142] The second is from the pen of an intelligent traveler, who made his observations early in 1743. It reads as follows: