Considering each male inhabitant both as a soldier and a planter, to be provided with arms and ammunition for defence as well as with utensils for cultivation, they adopted the pernicious resolution of introducing such tenures for holding lands as were most favourable to a military establishment. Each tract granted, was considered as a military fief, for which the possessor was to appear in arms, and take the field, when required for the public defence. The grants were in _tail male_; and, on the termination of the estate, the lands were to revert to the trust, to be re-granted to such persons as would most benefit the colony. Any lands which should not be enclosed, cleared, and cultivated, within eighteen years, reverted to the trust. The importation of negroes, and of rum, was prohibited; and those only were allowed to trade with the Indians, to whom a license should be given. However specious the arguments in support of these regulations might appear to the trustees, human ingenuity could scarcely have devised a system better calculated to defeat their hopes. The tenure of lands drove the settlers into Carolina where that property might be acquired in fee simple. The prohibition of slavery rendered the task of opening the country, too heavy to be successfully undertaken in that burning climate; and the restriction on their trade to the West Indies, deprived them of the only market for lumber, an article in which they abounded. {1734} Mr. Oglethorpe's first employment was the construction of fortifications for defence. He erected one fort on the Savanna, at Augusta, and another on an island of the Alatamaha, called Frederica, for defence against the Indians and the inhabitants of Florida. The Spaniards remonstrated against them; and a commissioner from the Havanna insisted on the evacuation of the country to the thirty-third degree of north latitude, which he claimed in the name of the King of Spain; but this remonstrance and claim were equally disregarded.