(2007) Chasing Fireflies - A Novel of Discovery by Charles Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

bad place to start, so let's back up. A lot.
    No one's really sure how the Golden Isles of Georgia got their name. Some credit the Spanish, others claim the English, who were promoting their seventeenth-century settlement. Regardless, Sea Island is the richest zip code in the country today; richer than Beverly Hills or Aspen during the ski season. Tolerable winters, breezy summers, and expansive beaches make up the isles, the westernmost shore on the East Coast. The location makes it a low-risk storm area because it's so far removed from the hurricane highway, aka the Gulf Stream. From the three-hundred-year-old oaks draped in Spanish moss swimming with chiggers and red bugs, to the white sandy beaches glittering with sharks' teeth and sand dollars, the entire region is cradled in the palms of an ecosystem we like to call the marsh. It's a noman's-land made up of soft mud flats crested by jagged oyster beds and knife-edged wire grass that changes colors hourly and bathes twice daily in the rising tide. But the most inescapable aspect of the marsh is the smell. While tourists drive across the causeway, get their first whiff, and turn up their noses, locals wake up, walk outside, stretch their arms, inhale, and fill their fingertips. From dead and rotting organisms to new life bubbling up through the muck, the marshlike its history-is a daily continuum of death and resurrection.

    The Creek Indians settled here first. Other than a few trash and burial mounds, the only remnants of their existence are found in the words they left: names like Satilla and Altamaha. In 1540, they greeted Spanish conqueror Hernando DeSoto and his troops with curiosity. DeSoto set one foot on the beach, claimed the coast for Spain, and returned the greeting with musket balls and disease. If that bugs you, don't worry. His achievement was short-lived, as he died in a return journey in 1542.
    But with limited success the Spanish returned to St. Augustine, giving the French the opportunity to brave the mosquitoes and start their own colony. Unflinching, Spanish King Phillip II sent in a party of Jesuits, who were promptly hacked to pieces by the remaining Indians. By 1570, most of the Jesuits had tired of the warfare and moved to Mexico, making room for the Franciscans in 1573.
    Now fast-forward a hundred years and hop back across the ocean to the motherland. Following years of war, debtor prisons in England were overflowing with often well-respected citizens who had overextended their credit in an attempt to pay their taxes. Looking at indefinite incarceration complete with filth, damp cells, starvation, and the beginnings of a smallpox epidemic, they jumped at the chance to settle Georgia under King George II's mandate to establish a colony between South Carolina and Florida. For God and country ... and the absolution of all debts.
    In November 1732 a two-hundred-ton frigate named Ann carried 114 "prisoners" and their families to the New World. Led by a British hero by the name of Oglethorpe, the ship landed in "Charles Town," where the sailors found their land legs and settled in. In 1736, Oglethorpe braved the hostile frontier, loaded his ship, and skirted the coast to Cockspur Island. With skilled blacksmiths, carpenters, and farmers, he ventured onto St. Simons and built a settlement, which they called Frederica. Knowing the flock would need spiritual leadership, Oglethorpe brought with him two brothers, John and Charles Wesley, to Christianize the Indians and build what is today Christ Church.

    The Spanish, headquartered in St. Augustine, saw the colony as an attack against the Spanish crown. So they mounted an offensive and marched northward. Outnumbering the English and feeling confident of victory, they retired for the day, built fires, and stacked their rifles in clusters around the campground. The English led by Scottish Highlanders, hid like guerillas in the palmetto bushes until they could smell the hint of dinner. The next day, when the