country, and six Spanish half gallies
carrying long brass nine pounders, and two sloops laden with
provisions, had entered the harbour. Finding the place better
fortified than had been expected, he determined to invest it
completely, and to advance by regular approaches. In execution of this
plan, colonel Palmer, with ninety-five Highlanders, and forty-two
Indians, remained at fort Moosa, while the army took different
positions near the town, and began an ineffectual bombardment from the
island of Anastasia. The general was deliberating on a plan for
forcing the harbour and taking a nearer position, when colonel Palmer
was surprised, and his detachment cut to pieces. At the same time some
small vessels from the Havanna, with a reinforcement of men and supply
of provisions, entered the harbour through the narrow channel of the
Matanzas.

The army began to despair of success; and the provincials, enfeebled
by the heat, dispirited by sickness, and fatigued by fruitless
efforts, marched away in large bodies. The navy being ill supplied
with provisions, and the season for hurricanes approaching, captain
Price was unwilling to hazard his majesty's ships on that coast. The
general, labouring under a fever, finding his regiment, as well as
himself, worn out with fatigue, and rendered unfit for action by
disease; reluctantly abandoned the enterprise, and returned to
Frederica.

The colonists, disappointed and chagrined by the failure of the
expedition, attributed this misfortune entirely to the incapacity of
the general, who was not less dissatisfied with them. Whatever may
have been the true causes of the failure, it produced a mutual and
injurious distrust between the general and the colonists.[134]

[Footnote 134: In the same year Charleston was reduced to
ashes. A large portion of its inhabitants passed, in one
day, from prosperity to indigence. Under the pressure of
this misfortune, the legislature applied to parliament for
aid; and that body, with a liberality reflecting honour on
its members, voted twenty thousand pounds, to be distributed
among the sufferers.]

{1742}

The events of the war soon disclosed the dangers resulting from this
want of confidence in general Oglethorpe, and, still more, from the
want of power to produce a co-operation of the common force for the
common defence.

Spain had ever considered the settlement of Georgia as an encroachment
on her territory, a