IN GEORGIA 135 



three points: to provide an asylum for the poor debtor 

 and persecuted Protestant ; to erect a silk, wine, and 

 drug -growing colony ; and to relieve the mother 

 country of an overburdened population." It was 

 estimated that the silks imported into England from 

 Italian, French, Chinese and other sources, amounted 

 to five hundred thousand pounds a year at the time 

 of the colonization of Georgia, about 1732 to 1735. 

 "With this Georgia will abundantly supply us," the 

 account of the secretary of the trustees runs, "if we 

 are not wanting to ourselves, and do not neglect the 

 opportunity which Providence has thrown into our 

 hands. The saving of this five hundred thousand 

 pounds per annum is not all; but our supplying our- 

 selves with raw silk from Georgia carries this further 

 advantage along with it, that it will provide a new or 

 additional employment for at least twenty thousand 

 people in Georgia, for about four months in the year, 

 during the silk season; and at least twenty thousand 

 more of our poor here, all the year round, in working 

 the raw silk, and preparing such manufactures as we 

 send in return; or to purchase the said raw silk in 

 Georgia, to which country our merchants will trade to 

 much greater advantage than they can expect to do in 

 Italy." The first colonial seal represented silk -worms 

 upon one of its faces.* 



*Although this seal is described in various histories, I have been unable to 

 find a print of the side bearing the silk-worms. None is in the collection of 

 Colonel Jones, the author of the history, nor of Otis Ashmore, an authority 

 on the seals of Georgia. Mr. Ashmore published a history of all the seals of 

 Georgia in the Morning News of Savannah, April 15, 1894. See, also, Jones' 

 History of Georgia, p. 97. It is probable that no impression of this aide of 

 the seal exists in this country, and it is presumed that Colonel Jones obtained 

 his information concerning it from the British Colonial Office. Another seal 

 was subsequently made. 



