Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/70

38 The Carolina* arid the Crown. [1710-29 help was sent from South Carolina. This time the work was done effectually, and the Tuscaroras were virtually annihilated. Scarcely was North Carolina relieved from the dread of an Indian invasion when a similar blow fell on the southern colony. It came from the Yamassees, an Indian tribe in alliance with the Spaniards. In 1710 three separate bands made a concerted onslaught on the colony, and 200 settlers fell. Happily the governor, Charles Craven, was not only a man of vigour and courage but enjoyed to the full the confidence and good-will of the settlers. An Indian raid might be furious, but the temper of the savage and his lack of resources always deprived it of endurance ; and, before the year was out, the colony was again in safety. Soon afterwards an expedition had to be undertaken against pirates. These successive operations left the colony in no little financial embarrassment. At every turn some cause of dispute and ill-feeling arose between the colonists and the Proprietors. At length, in December, 1719, the Assembly formally threw off the authority of the Proprietors and elected a governor under the Crown. The governor, the son of Sir Nathaniel Johnstone, did his best to uphold the authority of the Proprietors, but to no purpose. The advisers of the Crown accepted the situation and sent out Francis Nicholson, an experienced and fairly competent colonial official, to administer and pacify the province. In the northern province there was no attempt on the part of the colonists to throw off the authority of the Proprietors; but they had by this time come to perceive clearly that it was an irksome and profitless burden, and in no way worth retaining without the southern colony. In 1729 the Proprietors surrendered, for an equivalent in money, the whole of their rights over the northern province; and the two Carolinas passed into the condition of ordinary Crown colonies. NEW YORK AND DELAWARE. The Dutch colony of the New Netherlands has been already mentioned. When in 1664 the English government, with no adequate provocation, declared war on the United Provinces, the one definite result was the capture of this colony. At the very outbreak of the war Charles II granted to his brother the Duke of York the whole territory from the Connecticut to the Delaware. Morally speaking, the seizure was little better than a piece of buccaneering. In the result however one cannot doubt the substantial advantage to all concerned. Without control over the valley of the Hudson it would have been impossible for England to offer solid and united resistance to France. Yet one can hardly believe that a French colonial empire stretching from the St Lawrence to the Mississippi would have been either possible or desirable. That unhappy state of things, during which America was the battlefield of European powers, would have been prolonged; and independence, if it