nd sailors, restless, eager for
excitement, rude and unlettered, were a new thing to him, a book written
in a language to which he had no key. Later he would learn to find some
point of contact with the unlearned as well as the learned, with
the negro slave and the Yorkshire collier as well as the student of
theology, but just now his impulse was to hold himself aloof and let
their wild spirits dash against him like waves about the base of a
lighthouse which sends a clear, strong beam across the deep, but has few
rays for the tossing billows just beneath.

On the 18th of September land was sighted, and on the 29th the fleet
anchored in the harbor of St. Simon's Island, and with grateful hearts
the Moravians watched the landing of the soldiers. On the 4th of October
they transferred their baggage to a sloop bound for Savannah, which
sailed the 6th, but on account of head winds did not reach Savannah
until the 16th. The Moravians still at Savannah came in a boat to
welcome them, and take them to their house, but Boehler was anxious to
see the scene of his future labors, and stayed in town only a few days,
leaving on the 21st for a tour through Carolina. Schulius accompanied
him all the way, and several others as far as the Indian town where
Rose was living with his wife and child. Here they talked of many things
regarding the Savannah Congregation, but on the following afternoon
the missionaries went on their way, Zeisberger, Haberland, Boehner and
Regnier accompanying them to Purisburg.

There Boehler and Schulius lodged with one of the Swiss who had come to
Georgia with Spangenberg and the first company. His wife expressed the
wish that the Moravians in Savannah would take her thirteen-year-old
daughter the following winter, and give her instruction, for which she
would gladly pay. Boehler took occasion to speak to the couple about
salvation and the Saviour, and they appeared to be moved. Indeed this
was the main theme of all his conversations. To the owners of the
plantations visited, he spoke of their personal needs, and their
responsibility for the souls of their slaves; while to the slaves he
told the love of God, filling them with wonder, for most of them
were newly imported from the wilds of Africa, and suspicious even of
kindness. Many knew little of the English tongue, and the few who could
understand his words had not yet learned that there was a God who cared
how they lived or what became of them. Their maste