teaches
lessons of patience and patriotism, not surpassed in modern, and seldom
in ancient times.

WM. DOBEIN JAMES.

Introduction.

A view of the first settlement of the French Protestants on
the Santee. Lawson's account of them. The ancestors of
General Marion emigrate among them.

The revocation of the edict of Nantz, by Lewis XIV., though highly
detrimental to France, proved beneficial to Holland, England and
other European countries; which received the protestant refugees, and
encouraged their arts and industry. The effects of this unjust and
bigoted decree, extended themselves likewise to North America, but more
particularly to South Carolina: About seventeen years after its first
settlement, in the year 1690, and a short time subsequently, between
seventy and eighty French families, fleeing from the bloody persecution
excited against them in their mother country, settled on the banks of
the Santee. Among these were the ancestors of General FRANCIS MARION.
These families extended themselves at first only from the lower ferry at
South Santee, in St. James' parish, up to within a few miles of Lenud's
ferry, and back from the river into the parish of St. Dennis, called
the Orange quarter. From their first settlement, they appear to have
conciliated their neighbours, the Sewee and Santee Indians; and to have
submitted to their rigorous fate with that resignation and cheerfulness
which is characteristic of their nation.--Many must have been the
hardships endured by them in settling upon a soil covered with woods,
abounding in serpents and beasts of prey, naturally sterile, and
infested by a climate the most insalubrious. For a picture of their
sufferings read the language of one of them, Judith Manigault, bred a
lady in ease and affluence:--"Since leaving France we have experienced
every kind of affliction, disease, pestilence, famine, poverty, hard
labour; I have been for six months together without tasting bread,
working the ground like a slave." They cultivated the barren high
lands, and at first naturally attempted to raise wheat, barley and other
European grains upon them, until better taught by the Indians. Tradition
informs us, that men and their wives worked together in felling trees,
building houses, making fences, and grubbing up their grounds, until
their settlements were formed; and afterwards continued their labours at
the whip-saw,* and in burning tar for market. Such was thei