His mind was made up that he was not going to spend all of his days, like Tames and Andrew,
inbargaining, or all his nights, by candlelight, over long columns of figures. He felt keenly,
as hisbrothers did not, the social stigma attached to those “in trade.” Gerald wanted to be a
planter. Withthe deep hunger of an Irishman who has been a tenant on the lands his people once had
owned andhunted, he wanted to see his own acres stretching green before his eyes. With a ruthless
singlenessof purpose, he desired his own house, his own plantation, his own horse, his own slaves.
And herein this new country, safe from the twin perils of the land he had left—taxation that ate up
crops andbarns and the ever-present threat of sudden confiscation—he intended to have them. But
havingthat ambition and bringing it to realization were two different matters, he discovered as
time wentby. Coastal Georgia was too firmly held by an entrenched aristocracy for him ever to hope
to winthe place he intended to have.Then the hand of Fate and a hand of poker combined to give him
the plantation which heafterwards called Tara, and at the same time moved him out of the Coast into
the upland country ofnorth Georgia.It was in a saloon in Savannah, on a hot night in spring, when
the chance conversation of astranger sitting near by made Gerald prick up his ears. The stranger,
a native of Savannah, had justreturned after twelve years in the inland country. He had been one
of the winners in the land lotteryconducted by the State to divide up the vast area in middle
Georgia, ceded by the Indians the yearbefore Gerald came to America. He had gone up there and
established a plantation; but, now thehouse had burned down, he was tired of the “accursed place”
and would be most happy to get it offhis hands.Gerald, his mind never free of the thought of owning
a plantation of his own, arranged anintroduction, and his interest grew as the stranger told how
the northern section of the state wasfilling up with newcomers from the Carolinas and Virginia.
Gerald had lived in Savannah longenough to acquire a viewpoint of the Coast—that all of the rest
of the state was backwoods, withan Indian lurking in every thicket. In transacting business for
O’Hara Brothers, he had visitedAugusta, a hundred miles up the Savannah River, and he had traveled
inland far enough to visit theold towns westward from that city. He knew that section to be as well
settled as the Coast, but fromthe stranger’s description, his plantation was more than two hundred
and fifty miles inland fromSavannah to the north and west, and not many miles south of the
Chattahoochee River. Geraldknew that northward beyond that stream the land was still held by the
Cherokees, so it was withamazement that he heard the stranger jeer at suggestions of trouble with
the Indians and narratehow thriving towns were growing up and plantations prospering in the new
country.