felders gave a new turn to their thoughts, and
suggested the advantages that might accrue from a settlement in America
to which they might all retreat if the persecution in Saxony waxed
violent; but early in the year 1734, the question "Shall we go to
Georgia only as Colonists, or also as Missionaries?" was submitted to
the lot, and the answer was "As Missionaries also."

The defection of the Schwenkfelders, therefore, while a serious
interference with the Herrnhut plan, was not allowed to ruin the
project. Zinzendorf wrote again to the Trustees, and they repeated their
promise of land, provided his colonists would go at their own expense.

After much consultation the decision was reached that Zinzendorf should
ask for a tract of five hundred acres, and that ten men should be sent
over to begin a town, their families and additional settlers to follow
them in a few months.

The next step was to find a way to send these men across the Atlantic.
Baron George Philipp Frederick von Reck, a nephew of Herr von Pfeil,
who had led the first company of Salzburgers to Georgia, was planning to
take a second company in the course of the next months. He was young and
enthusiastic, met Zinzendorf's overtures most kindly, and even visited
Herrnhut in the early part of October, 1734, when, as it happened,
nine of the prospective colonists were formally presented to the
Congregation. Baron Reck was very much impressed, promised to take with
him to Georgia any of the Moravians who wished to go, and even sent to
David Nitschmann, who was to conduct the party as far as London, full
authorization to bring as many as desired to come, promising each
man who went at his own expense a fifty-acre freehold in Georgia, and
offering others necessary assistance when they reached London. This
paper was signed at Bautzen, October 22nd, 1734.

But Reck had failed to realize the force of the Halle opposition to
Herrnhut, and soon weakened under the weight of persuasion and command
laid upon him by those whose opinion he felt obliged to respect. On the
4th of November he wrote from Windhausen to Graf Stolberg Wernigerode,
"I have hesitated and vexed myself in much uncertainty whether or not I
should go with the Herrnhuters to America. And now I know that God has
heard our prayer at Halle and Wernigerode, and your letters have decided
me to stay in Germany this winter, in the first place because my
going would be a grief to my dear Urlsperger, whom I lo