“May God deliver you and yours from all error, and all unholiness! My prayers will never, I trust, be wanting for you. I am, dear brother, my sister’s and your “Most affectionate brother, “JOHN WESLEY.”[178] At the end of the year 1736, Wesley and Delamotte set out, on foot, to Cowpen, missed their way, walked through a cypress swamp, with the water breast high, and slept on the ground in their wet clothes, which during the night were frozen, and in the morning were white as snow. They then started for Frederica, fell short of provisions, used bear’s flesh, and proved it to be wholesome. Arriving on January 5, 1737, they found the people, as they expected, cold and heartless. Wesley’s life was repeatedly threatened; and, after spending twenty more days in this unhappy place, he departed from Frederica for ever. In his passage to Savannah he read a volume containing the works of Nicholas Machiavel, and formed the deliberate opinion, “that if all the other doctrines of devils, which have been committed to writing, were collected together in one volume, it would fall short of this; and that should a prince form himself by this book, so calmly recommending hypocrisy, treachery, lying, robbery, oppression, adultery, whoredom, and murder of all kinds, Domitian or Nero would be an angel of light compared to that man.” Wesley had now been fifty-two weeks in America, twenty-four of which he had spent at Savannah, and the rest at Frederica and at other places between the two. He remained forty-six weeks longer. How was he occupied? And what were his troubles? Delamotte was teaching between thirty and forty children at Savannah to read, write, and cast accounts, and Wesley catechized them every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Every sabbath he had three public services, at five in the morning, twelve at mid-day, and three in the afternoon; and then at night as many of his parishioners as desired it met at his house, with whom he spent an hour in prayer, singing, and mutual exhortation. A similar meeting was held in the same place every Wednesday night, and selecter ones on all the other evenings of the week. There being no immediate prospect of commencing a mission among the heathen, Wesley, Delamotte, and Ingham consulted together, and agreed that the last mentioned should return to England; and accordingly, after spending exactly fifty-five weeks in Georgia, he embarked for home, having literally done next to nothing either for the colonists or the Indians, with the exception of composing, in Dr. Byrom’s shorthand, a catalogue of half the words in the Indian language,[179] in a house built for him near the Indian town, a few miles from Savannah. The chief object of sending Ingham to England was to obtain more help for the colonists. In a letter dated February 16, 1737, and addressed to a friend in Lincoln College, Oxford, Wesley writes:—