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prietary rule without resorting to actual revolution. From the moment that the southern colony passed under the wing of royal protection, the northern colony grew more restive, and complained of being the servants of a corporation. In 1729, they were actually on the verge of revolution, when the proprietors, seeing what must inevitably be the result, made a virtue of necessity and sold their domain to the crown for a sum amounting to about eighty thousand dollars, and North Carolinia became a royal province. The two Carolinias were separated, and George Burrington was appointed governor of North Carolinia, while Robert Johnson was made chief magistrate of South Carolinia.

These lovers of liberty in the south land were soon convinced that they had gained nothing by the change. From the time of the separation to the French and Indian war, they were involved in disputes with the royal governors.

Maryland and Virginia, the other two colonies of the south-land, bore their share of the struggle with the Indians, forming a record somewhat similar to the history just narrated.

The greatest event which occurred in Virginia during the first half of the eighteenth century was at the home of a planter on Bridges Creek, on the 22d of February, 1732. The house commanded a view over many miles of the Potomac and the op

posite shore of Maryland. It was a plain, substantial mansion with nothing elegant about it. The yard was ornamented with chestnut and fig trees. In the house, on the day and year above mentioned, was born a child who was destined in the future to consolidate and form out of a few rude colonies a great and glorious nation; to complete what Columbus had begun; to build up a powerful republic in the New World.

Not a vestige of that house remains. A stone marks the site, and an inscription denotes it as being the birthplace of

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DEBTORS' PRISON.

To Carolinia be a Georgia joined:

Then shall both colonies sure progress make
Endeared to either for the other's sake;
Georgia shall Carolinia's protection move,
And Carolinia bloom by Georgia's love.

-GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

ONE of the most posperous and wealthy planters of Virginia was Elmer Stevens, whose plantation joined the extensive farm of Mr. Augustine Washington, then a modest, cultured gentleman of Virginia. In the year 1721, Elmer Stevens' son Noah was born. He was destined to take a prominent part in the future struggles of the colonies and even to see them amalgamated into one comprehensive nationality, to enter upon the arena of the world's politics, and take a place among the foremost nations of the earth.

The little blue eyes which gazed in wonder upon the Potomac, or the tall, wide-spreading chestnuts, whose shades formed the playground of his child

hood, were to gaze on the first star-spangled banner ever unfurled by the sons of freedom.

Noah Stevens, even when a child was fond of sitting on his father's knee and listening to the wild stories of his life at sea. Those tales made such an impression on him that, almost as soon as he could talk, he declared:

"I am going to be a sailor."

Whenever he saw the white-sailed sloops gliding up the Potomac, he clapped his hands in glee and cried:

"I am going to sea! Oh, I am going to sea!"

He was eight years old when his father told him of the terrible fight on board the New England privateer in which his brother, then but a lad, was wounded, and how he was taken to Boston and left with some relatives to recover. He told how while at Deerfield he was captured with many others by Indians and taken away to the great north woods.

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And did you never see him more?" asked the child.

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Then little Noah sat for a long time with his head bowed in his small hands, lost in deep thought. Young as he was, he had heard more stories of captivity than the average man of forty at this day and age. The frontier teemed with

romance and adventure. Novels were lived and acted, rather than imagined. Men and women had disappeared for years and then, all of a sudden, had returned from a life of captivity in the forest. Why might not this man also be a captive?

Father, uncle George may be alive yet," said

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"Only a few days ago Solomon Daniels, who was twelve years a captive of the Tuscaroras, made his escape and came home. Might not he?"

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But we heard that your uncle George was dead."

"Did we not hear that Mr. Daniels was dead?" "Yes."

"But he still lives."

"True, true, my son.

"And so uncle George may live."

Mr. Stevens sighed and shook his head sadly, as he answered:

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