governor in our State. in our State. But for all that, he was a good and brave man, and his name stands much higher than Berkeley's. It is of no consequence how a man dies if he has lived well. Berkeley died within that same year in England, where he had gone to explain away his barbarous conduct, but the king refused to see him or to forgive him for his cruelty. He is said to have died "of a broken heart," but it is not likely that he had much heart to break.

The lake in the Great Dismal Swamp between North Carolina and Virginia was named in honor of Governor Drummond.

RECITATION.

LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.

[They tell of a young man who had lost his mind on the death of the girl he loved, and who suddenly disappeared, and never was heard of again. As he often had raved about her not being dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it was supposed he had wandered thither and perished in its dreadful morasses.]

THEY made her a grave too cold and damp

For a soul so warm and true;

And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by a firefly lamp,

She paddles her white canoe.

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds-
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,

Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.

And when on earth he sunk to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,

He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew.

And near him the she-wolf stirred the brake,
The coppersnake breathed in his ear,
Till he starting cried, from his dream awake,
"Oh, when shall I see the dusky lake,
And the white canoe of my dear?"

Then he hollowed a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore;

Far, far he followed the meteor spark;
The wind was high and the clouds were dark,
And the boat returned no more.

But oft from the Indian hunter's camp
This lover and maid so true

Are seen, at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the lake by a firefly lamp,

And paddle their white canoe.

THOMAS MOORE.

CHAPTER VII.

MAKING THE FIRST LAWS.

1667. SAMUEL STEPHENS was appointed by the "Lords" to succeed Drummond as governor of Carolina, or rather of the Albemarle province. We are to remember that the States of North and South Carolina had not yet been divided, nor the State of Georgia. The Albemarle region was the first settled of all that vast territory, and the men sent to govern Albemarle governed all "Carolina."

Now that law and government were established, the people had to wait for orders from England about everything. It would take a ship from four to six months to go and come, and so long they must wait to know what they might do about selling their crops or buying their lands or paying their rents or settling ever so many little matters of every-day business in which they had heretofore always done just as they pleased.

The Lords Proprietors and their governors wished everything here to be ordered just as it was in the mother-country. The Episcopal Church had been for more than a hundred years the only Church established by law in England. Every one there had to pay for its support, whether they

liked it or not. The "Lords" of course meant that it should be the established Church here too. Other churches were to be allowed. People might build and worship as they chose without being persecuted, but no ministers but Church-of-England ministers were to be paid by the State or were allowed to perform the marriage ceremony or to teach in the schools, for they were the only lawful ministers. No other Church was established by law but that one.

All this was very vexatious and tedious, and made these free folks in the North Carolina woods feel very impatient of their "Lords" and governors.

The people could not choose their own governors, but they could elect the members of their legislature, or "Assembly," that met every two years, and were allowed to make and unmake the laws in general pretty much as they pleased. They laid the taxes and settled the money affairs, and had a great deal of power. As there were no towns in those early days, they generally met at some well-known tavern or public man's house that was convenient. The first legislature elected by the people met in 1665. of the first laws made was that no man living in Carolina should be arrested for debts that he owed before he came here. In those days a man could be put in jail who did not pay his debts.

One

This law made the people in Virginia very angry, because a great many Virginians who were in debt would easily slip across the line into Carolina, and call themselves Carolinians, and be very comfortable here without paying anything.

The governor had a council of twelve men, who were his advisers, and the president of this council, or the "Speaker," the presiding officer of the legislature, would be called on to take the governor's place in case of his death till the Lords Proprietors could appoint another.

The first justices of the peace were appointed in the year 1679. The first chief-justice was Edward Mosely, but he was not in office till 1707.

All the laws and regulations and forms of government for Church and State were on the pattern of those in England, for the people naturally looked to England and the king and the government there as still their own, and were glad to belong to them. They called it

"home."

It seems almost a pity that the kings and "Lords" did not feel the same love and kindly interests in the colonies over here, and did not try to govern them wisely and keep them loving subjects of the Crown. If they had, however, we never would have been free, never would have broken away from them and become the great, independent United States of America.

This history will tell how gradually we learned to feel that the government of the "Lords" first, and of the king himself afterward, was oppressive, unjust, intolerable. It took the people of Carolina just about one hundred years to learn this lesson and to resolve to govern themselves.

1670. It was in Governor Stephens's time that the "Lords" sent over their absurd and useless 66 Fundamental Constitution." Whenever they tried to carry out