wever, with Lord Baltimore,
over the south boundary line, which was not settled till 1763-67, when
two surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, came over from England
and located it as at present. In later years, when all the Atlantic
seaboard states north of Maryland and Delaware had abolished slavery,
this "Mason and Dixon's Line" became famous as the dividing line between
the slave and the free Atlantic states.]

%51. The Three Lower Counties: Delaware.%--If you look at the map of
the British Colonies in 1764, you will see that Pennsylvania was the
only English colony which did not have a seacoast. This was a cause of
some anxiety to Penn, who was afraid that the settlers in Delaware and
New Jersey might try to prevent his colonists from going in and out of
Delaware Bay. To avoid this, he bought what is now Delaware from the
Duke of York.

The three lower counties on the Delaware, as the tract was called, had
no boundary. Lawfully it belonged to Lord Baltimore. But neither the
Dutch patroons who settled on the Delaware in 1631, nor the Swedes who
came later, nor the Dutch who annexed New Sweden to New Netherland, nor
the English who conquered the Dutch, paid any regard to Baltimore's
rights. At last, after the purchase of Delaware, the heirs of Baltimore
and of Penn (1732) agreed on what is the present boundary line. After
1703 the people of the three lower counties were allowed to have an
assembly or legislature of their own; but they had the same governor as
Pennsylvania and were a part of that colony till the Revolution.[1]

[Footnote 1: For Pennsylvania read Janney's _Life of William Penn_ or
Dixon's _History of William Penn_; Proud's or Gordon's _Pennsylvania_;
Lodge's _Colonies_, pp. 213-226.]

%52. Georgia.%--The return of the Carolinas to the King in 1729 was
very soon followed by the establishment of the last colony ever planted
by England in the United States. The founder was James Oglethorpe, an
English soldier and member of Parliament. Filled with pity for the poor
debtors with whom the English jails were then crowded, he formed a plan
to pay the debts of the most deserving, send them to America, and give
them what hundreds of thousands of men have since found in our
country,--a chance to begin life anew.

[Illustration]

Great numbers of people became interested in his plan, and finally
twenty-two persons under Oglethorpe's lead formed an association and
secured a charter from King George II.