Note 12 — XX

Page 368. The climate of this southern region at this period seems to have won some renown for its extremes. An officer’s letter from Fort Prince George, dated January 9, 1761, says: “I have been several winters in the north of Scotland and do not think I have ever felt it colder there than here at this time; the snow is in general three quarters of a yard deep, attended with very sharp frosts.” As to the summer temperature, Governor Ellis has left it of record in a letter to John Ellis, Esq., F.R.S., dated Georgia, July 17, 1758, that he thought the inhabitants of this section “breathed hotter air than any other people upon earth.” He takes pains to state that he made his observations with the same thermometer that he had had with him in the equatorial parts of Africa and in the Leeward Islands. Hewatt, the historian, ventures to protest, albeit deferring to the accuracy and learning of the erudite and traveled governor, and says that the mercury never so far exceeded the bounds of reason in South Carolina, and implies that he believed that these eccentricities were very rare in Georgia.