Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/352

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on St. Julian Street lost its distinctive character, and became an assembly hall for the town meeting and the militia muster; but upon the Savannah River, a few miles above the city, Eli Whitney, the shrewd Connecticut contriver, worked out the secret saws of the cotton-gin, and made Georgia and the whole South opulent and powerful. The Piedmontese still spin their silk under their own trees at home; but ten million bales of cotton annually whiten in the suns and frosts, and to-day more than one million bales each year are exported from Savannah alone. So two New England heroes, Nathanael Greene and Eli Whitney, aided in protecting the people of Georgia from a foreign foe and in building up their commercial supremacy.

No sketch of colonial Georgia is adequate which omits the name of Tomochichi. This aged Creek was over ninety years old when he welcomed Oglethorpe to his demesne. The loyalty of the venerable mico to his white friends never faltered. He hailed them with all the grace and amity of Montezuma, and guarded them against attacks from the tribes of the interior. In his youth a great warrior, Tomochichi in the evening of his life was noted