Carolina, the adjoining province, had been formed into an English settlement in 1663. One portion of the colonists were Churchmen; another, quite as large, were Dissenters, who had escaped, as refugees, from tyrannising governments. There were numerous quarrellings between the two classes of religionists. This was bad enough, but it was not the only evil. Eight English noblemen had obtained a charter for the property and jurisdiction of the country. John Locke, the great philosopher, had compiled its fundamental laws. The lordly proprietors stood in the place of the king, appointed all officers, and bestowed all titles of dignity. The people were dissatisfied with the proceedings of their governors, and violent disputes followed. Then there were two wars with the Indian tribes; and, as a consequence of the whole, the colony was almost torn to pieces. Ten years before Whitefield's embarkation, the Parliament of England put the province under the immediate care and inspection of the Crown. Peace was soon established with all the neighbouring Indian nations--the Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Catuabas; Carolina, north and south, was delivered from its internal quarrels; and now trade was advancing with astonishing rapidity. The climate of Carolina and of the adjoining region, now called Georgia, was one of the finest in the world. The soil of both countries was marvellously rich. Where cultivated, oranges, olives, rice, indigo, wheat, peas, and Indian corn were grown in great abundance. Most of the land, however, was entirely untilled, and consisted of swamps of black fat earth, immense forests of oaks and pines, and, here and there, luxuriant glades, overrun with flowering shrubs and plants the most beautiful.[128] [128] "An Account of the European Settlements in America," 2 vols. London, 1761. Though the Georgian colony was now only six years old, five companies of emigrants had already landed. 1. The motley band of released debtors, a hundred and twenty in number, who arrived with Oglethorpe, in February, 1733. 2. The Saltzburghers, who set sail from Dover on January 8, 1734. 3. A number of Scotch islanders, who founded New Inverness, in Darien. 4. Two different sets of Moravians, with one of whom Wesley and his brother sailed. These were Whitefield's parishioners, most of them foreign refugees, a few of them Presbyterian Highlanders, and the rest chiefly insolvent debtors, whom the hand of charity had rescued from London prisons. Wesley's life among them had been embittered by all kinds of vexations, to a great extent engendered by his endeavouring to enforce High-Church discipline. How did Whitefield succeed? His present sojourn was not of long continuance--only four months--but it comprised numerous incidents worthy of being noticed.