or the Isthmus of Panama, is a province between South and North America, being a narrow isthmus, or neck of land, which joins them together. It is bounded on the north by the North Sea, on the south by the South Sea, on the east by the gulph or river of Darien, and on the west by another part of the South Sea and the province of Veragua. It lies in the form of a bow, or crescent, about the great bay of Panama, in the South Sea; and is 300 miles in length and 60 in breadth. This province is not the richest, but is of the greatest importance to Spain, and has been the scene of more actions than any other in America. The wealth of Peru is brought hither, and from hence exported to Europe. This has induced many enterprising people to make attempts on Panama, Darien, Porto-Bello, and other towns of this province, in hopes of obtaining a rich booty.

The Scotch got possession of part of this province in 1699, and attempted to form an establishment which would have proved one of the most useful and important that ever was projected. Of the rise, progress, and catastrophe, of this well-imagined, but ill-fated, undertaking, Sir John Dalrymple, in the 2d volume of his Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, has given a very interesting account, authenticated in every particular by unquestionable documents. The projector and leader of the Darien expedition was a clergyman of the name of Pateron; who having a violent propensity to see foreign countries, he made his profession the instrument of indulging it, by going to the new western world, under pretence of converting the Indians to the religion of the old. In his courses there, he became acquainted with Capt. Dampier and Mr. Water, who afterwards published, the one his Voyages and the other his Travels, in the region where the separation is narrowest between the Atlantic and the South Seas; and both of whom, particularly the first, appear by their books to have been men of considerable observation. But he got much more knowledge from men who could neither write nor read, by cultivating the acquaintance of some of the old Buccaneers, who, after surviving their glories and their crimes, still, in the extremity of age and misfortune, recounted with transport the ease with which they had passed and repassed from the one sea to the other, sometimes in hundreds together, and driving strings of mules before them loaded with the plunder of friends and of foes. Pateron having examined the places, satisfied himself, that on the Isthmus Darien there was a tract of country running across from the Atlantic to the South Sea, which the Spaniards had never possessed, and inhabited by a people continually at war with them; that along the coast, on the Atlantic side, there lay a string of islands called the Sambaloes, uninhabited, and full of natural strength and forests, from which last circumstance one of them was called the island of the Pines; that the seas there were filled with turtle and manatee or sea-cow; that midway between Porto-bello and Cartagena, but near 50 leagues distant from either, at a place called Ada, in the mouth of the river of Darien, there was a natural harbour, capable of receiving the greatest fleets, and defended from storms by other islands which covered the mouth of it, and from enemies by a promontory which commanded the passage, and by hidden rocks in the passage itself; that on the other side of the isthmus, and in the same tract of country, there were natural harbours, equally capacious and well defended; that the two seas were connected by a ridge of hills, which, by their height, created a temperate climate in the midst of the most fultry latitudes, and were sheltered by forests, yet not rendered damp by them, because the trees grew at a distance from each other, having very little under-wood; that, contrary to the barren nature of hilly countries, the soil was of a black mould two or three feet deep, and producing spontaneously the fine tropical fruits and plants, and roots and herbs; that roads could be made with ease along the ridge, by which mules, and even carriages, might pass from the one sea to the other in the space of a day; and consequently this passage seemed to be pointed out by the finger of nature, as a common centre, to connect together the trade and intercourse of the universe.

Pateron knew that ships which stretch in a straight line from one point to another, and with one wind, run less risks, and require fewer hands, than ships which pass through many latitudes, turn with many coasts, and require many winds; in evidence of which, vessels of seven or eight hundred tons burden are often to be found in the South Seas, navigated by no more than eight or ten hands, because these hands have little else to do than to set their sails when they begin their voyage, and to take them in when they end it; so soon as ships from Britain got so far south as to reach the trade-wind, which never varies, that wind would carry them to Darien, and the same wind would carry ships from the bay of Panama, on the opposite side of the isthmus, to the East-Indies; that as soon as ships coming from the East-Indies to the bay of Panama got so far north as the latitude of 40°, to reach the westerly winds, which, about that latitude, blow almost as regularly from the west as the trade winds do from the east, these winds would carry them, in the track of the Spanish Acapulco ships, to the coast of Mexico; from whence the land-wind, which blows forever from the north to the south, would carry them along the coast of Mexico into the bay of Panama. So that in going from Britain, ships would encounter no uncertain winds, except during their passage south into the latitude of the trade wind; in coming from India to the bay of Panama no uncertain winds, except in their passage north to the latitude of the westerly winds; and in going from the other side of the isthmus to the east, no uncertain wind whatsoever.

—Gold was seen by Pateron in some places of the isthmus; and hence an island on the Atlantic side was called the Golden Island, and a river on the side to the South Sea was called the Golden River; but these were objects which he regarded not at that time, because far greater were in his eye; the removing of distances, the drawing nations nearer to each other, the preservation of the valuable lives of seamen, and the saving in freight, so important to merchants, and in time so important to them, and to an animal whose life is of so short duration as that of man.

By this obscure Scotsman, a project was formed to settle, on this neglected spot, a great and powerful colony; not as other colonies have for the most part been settled, by chance, and unprotected by the country from whence they went; but by system, upon foresight, and to receive the ample protection of those governments to whom he was to offer his project. And certainly no greater idea has been formed since the time of Columbus.

Pateron's original intention was to offer his project to England, as the country which had most interest in it, not only from the benefit common to all nations, of shortening the length of voyages to the East Indies, but by the effect which it would have had to connect the interests of her European, West Indian, American, African, and East Indian trade. But Pateron having few acquaintance, and no protection in London, thought of drawing the public eye upon him, and ingratiating himself... himself with monied men, and with great men, by afflicting them to model a project, which was at that time in embryo, for erecting the Bank of England. But that happened to him which has happened to many in his situation: the persons to whom he applied made use of his ideas, took the honour of them to themselves, were civil to him for a while, and neglected him afterwards. He therefore communicated his project of a colony only to a few persons in London, and these few discouraged him.

He next made offer of his project to the Dutch, the Hamburghers, and the Elector of Brandenburgh; because, by means of the passage of the Rhine and Elbe through their states, he thought, that the great additional quantities of East Indian and American goods, which his colony would bring into Europe, would be distributed through Germany. The Dutch and Hamburgh merchants, who had most interest in the subject of his visit, heard him with indifference: The Elector, who had very little interest in it, received him with honour and kindness. But court-arts and false reports lost him even that prince's favour.

Paterson, on his return to London, formed a friendship with Mr Fletcher of Salton, whose mind was inflamed with the love of public good, and all of whose ideas to procure it had a sublimity in them. Fletcher brought Paterson down to Scotland with him, presented him to the Marquis of Tweeddale, then Minister for Scotland; and then, with that power which a vehement spirit always possesses over a diffident one, persuaded the Marquis, by arguments of public good, and the honour which would redound to his administration, to adopt the project. Lord Stair and Mr Johnston, the two secretaries of state, patronised those abilities in Paterson which they possessed in themselves; and the Lord Advocate Sir James Stuart, the same man who had adjusted the Prince of Orange's declaration at the Revolution, whose son was married to a niece of Lord Stair, went naturally along with his connections. These persons, in June 1695, procured a statute from parliament, and afterwards a charter from the crown in terms of it, for creating a trading company to Africa and the new world, with power to plant colonies and build forts, with consent of the inhabitants, in places not possessed by other European nations.

Paterson, now finding the ground firm under him, and that he was supported by almost all the power and talents of his country, the character of Fletcher, and the sanction of an act of parliament and royal charter, threw his project boldly upon the public, and opened a subscription for a company. The frenzy of the Scots nation to sign the solemn league and covenant never exceeded the rapidity with which they ran to subscribe to the Darien Company. The nobility, the gentry, the merchants, the people, the royal burghs without the exception of one, most of the other public bodies, subscribed. Young women threw their little fortunes into the stock, widows sold their jointures to get the command of money for the same purpose. Almost in an instant £400,000 were subscribed in Scotland, although it be now known, that there was not at that time above £300,000 of cash in the kingdom. The famous Mr Law, then a youth, afterwards confessed, that the facility with which he saw the passion of speculation communicate itself from all to all, satisfied him of the possibility of producing the same effect from the same cause, but upon a larger scale, when the Duke of Orleans, in the year of the Mississippi, engaged him against his will to turn his bank into a bubble. Paterson's project, which had been received by strangers with fears when opened to them in private, filled them with hopes when it came to them upon the wings of public fame: For Colonel Erskine, Ion to Lord Cardross, and Mr Haldane of Glenegles, the one a generous branch of a generous stem, and the other a country gentleman of fortune and character, having been deputed to receive subscriptions in England and on the continent, the English subscribed £1,300,000, and the Dutch and Hamburghers £200,000 more.

In the mean time the jealousy of trade (continues our author), which has done more mischief to the trade of England than all other causes put together, created an alarm in England; and the Houses of Lords and Commons, without previous inquiry or reflection, on the 13th of December 1695, concurred in a joint address to the King, against the establishment of the Darien Company, as detrimental to the interest of the East India Company. Soon after, the Commons impeached some of their own countrymen for being instrumental in erecting the company; and also some of the Scots nation, one of whom was a peer, Lord Belhaven; that is to say, they arraigned the subjects of another country for making use of the laws of their own. Among 600 legislators, not one had the happy ray of genius to propose a committee of both parliaments, to inquire into the principles and consequences of the establishment; and if there should, upon inquiry, be found, that the benefit of it should be communicated, by a participation of rights, to both nations. The King's answer was, "That he had been ill advised in Scotland." He soon after changed his Scottish ministers, and sent orders to his resident at Hamburgh to present a memorial to the senate, in which he disowned the company and warned them against all connections with it. The senate sent the memorial to the assembly of merchants, who returned it with the following spirited answer: "We look upon it as a very strange thing, that the King of Britain should offer to hinder us, who are a free people, to trade with whom we please; but are amazed to think, that he would hinder us from joining with his own subjects in Scotland, to whom he had lately given such large privileges, by so solemn an act of parliament." But merchants, though mighty prone to passion, are easily intimidated: The Dutch, Hamburgh, and London merchants withdrew their subscriptions.

The Scots, not discouraged, were rather animated by this opprobrium; for they converted it into a proof of the envy of the English, and of their consciousness of the great advantages which were to flow to Scotland from the colony. The company proceeded to build six ships in Holland, from 36 to 60 guns, and they engaged 1,200 men for the colony; among whom were younger sons of many of the noble and most ancient families of Scotland, and 60 officers who had been disbanded at the peace, who carried with them such of their private men, generally raised on their own, or the estates of their relations, as they knew to be faithful and brave; and most of these were Highlanders. Darien. Scots parliament, on the 5th August 1698, unanimously addressed the King to support the company. The Lord President Sir Hugh Dalrymple, brother to Lord Stair and head of the bench, and the Lord Advocate Sir James Stuart, head of the bar, jointly drew memorials to the King, able in point of argument, information, and arrangement; in which they defended the rights of the company upon the principles of constitutional and of public law. And neighbouring nations, with a mixture of surprise and respect, saw the poorest kingdom of Europe sending forth the most gallant and the most numerous colony that had ever gone from the old to the new world.

On the 26th day of July of the year 1698, the whole city of Edinburgh poured down upon Leith, to see the colony depart, amidst the tears and prayers and praises of relations and friends and of their countrymen. Many seamen and soldiers, whose services had been refused because more had offered themselves than were needed, were found hid in the ships, and, when ordered ashore, clung to the ropes and timbers, imploring to go without reward with their companions. Twelve hundred men sailed in five stout ships, and arrived at Darien in two months, with the loss of only 15 of their people. At that time it was in their power, most of whom were well born, and all of them hardly bred, and injured by the fatigues and dangers of the late war, to have gone from the northmost part of Mexico to the southmost of Chili, and to have overturned the whole empire of Spain in the South Seas: But modestly reflecting their own and their country's character, and afraid of being accused that they had plundered, and not a settlement, in view; they began with purchasing lands from the natives, and sending messages of amity to the Spanish governors within their reach: and then fixed their station at Acta, calling it New St Andrew, from the name of the tutelar saint of Scotland, and the country itself New Caledonia. One of the sides of the harbour being formed by a long narrow neck of land which ran into the sea, they cut it across so as to join the ocean and the harbour. Within this defence they erected their fort, planting upon it 50 pieces of cannon. On the other side of the harbour there was a mountain a mile high, on which they placed a watch-house, which, in the rarefied air within the tropics, so favourable for vision, gave them an immense range of prospect, to prevent all surprise. To this place, it was observed, that the Highlanders often repaired, to enjoy a cool air, and to talk of their friends they had left behind in their hills; friends whose minds were as high as their mountains. The first public act of the colony was to publish a declaration of freedom of trade and religion to all nations. This luminous idea originated with Paterson.

But the Dutch East India Company having pressed the king, in concurrence with his English subjects, to prevent the settlement at Darien, orders had been sent from England to the governors of the West Indian and American colonies, to issue proclamations against giving assistance, or even to hold correspondence with the colony; and these were more or less harshly expressed, according to the temper of the different governors. The Scots, trusting to far different treatment, and to the supplies which they expected from those colonies, had not brought provisions enough with them; they fell into diseases from bad food and from want of food. But the more generous savages, by hunting and fishing for them, gave them that relief which fellow Britons refused. They lingered eight months, awaiting, but in vain, for assistance from Scotland; and almost all of them either died out or quitted the settlement. Paterson, who had been the first that entered the ship at Leith, was the last who went on board at Darien.

During the space of two years, while the establishment of this colony had been in agitation, Spain had made no complaint to England or Scotland against it. The Darien council even averred in their papers (which are in the Advocates Library), that the right of the company was debated before the king, in presence of the Spanish ambassador, before the colony left Scotland. But now, on the 3rd of May 1696, the Spanish ambassador at London presented a memorial to the king, which complained of the settlement at Darien as an incroachment on the rights of his master.

The Scots, ignorant of the misfortunes of their colony, but provoked at this memorial, sent out another colony soon after of 1300 men, to support an establishment which was now no more. But this last expedition having been more hastily prepared than the first, was unlucky in its passage. One of the ships was lost at sea, many men died on ship-board, and the rest arrived at different times, broken in their health and dispirited, when they heard the fate of those who had gone before them.—Added to the misfortunes of the first colony, the second had a misfortune peculiar to itself: The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland sent out four ministers, with orders, "to take charge of the souls of the colony, and to erect a presbytery, with a moderator, clerk, and record of proceedings; to appoint ruling elders, deacons, overseers of the manners of the people, and assistants in the exercise of church discipline and government, and to hold regular kirk-sessions." When they arrived, the officers and gentlemen were occupied in building houses for themselves with their own hands, because there was no help to be got from others; yet the four ministers complained grievously that the council did not order houses to be immediately built for their accommodation. They had not had the precaution to bring with them letters of recommendation from the directors at home to the council abroad. On these accounts, not meeting with all the attention they expected from the higher, they paid court to the inferior ranks of the colonists, and by that means threw divisions into the colony. They exhausted the spirits of the people, by requiring their attendance at sermon four or five hours at a stretch, relieving each other by preaching alternately, but allowing no relief to their hearers. The employment of one of the days set aside for religious exercise, which was a Wednesday, they divided into three parts, thanksgiving, humiliation, and supplication, in which three ministers followed each other. And as the service of the church of Scotland consists of a lecture with a comment, a sermon, two prayers, three psalms, and a blessing, the work of that day, upon an average of the length of the service of that age, could not take up less than twelve hours: during which space of time the colony was collected, and kept close together in the guard-room, which was used as a church, in a tropical climate, and in a sickly season. They presented a paper to the council, and made it public, requiring them to set aside a day for a solemn fasting and humiliation, and containing their reasons for their requisition; in which, under pretence of enumerating the sins of the people, they poured abuse on their rulers. They damped the courage of the people, by continually presenting hell to them as the termination of life to most men, because most men are sinners. Carrying the presbyterian doctrine of predestination to extremes, they stopped all exertions, by showing that the consequence of them depended not on those by whom they were made. They converted the numberless accidents to which soldiers and seamen are exposed, into immediate judgments of God against their sins. And having resolved to quit the settlement, they, in excuse for their doing so, wrote bitter letters to the General Assembly against the characters of the colonists, and the advantages of the colony itself.

One of them, in a kind of history of the colony which he published, with a savage triumph exulted over the misfortunes of his countrymen in the following words:—“They were such a rude company, that I believe Sodom never declared such impudence in fining as they. Any observant eye might see, that they were running the way they went: hell and judgment was to be seen upon them, and in them, before the time: Their cup was full; it could hold no more: They were ripe; they must be cut down with the fickle of the wrath of God.”

The last party that joined the second colony at Darien, after it had been three months settled, was Captain Campbell of Finab, with a company of the people of his own estate, whom he had commanded in Flanders, and whom he carried to Darien in his own ship. On their arrival at New St Andrew, they found intelligence had been lately received, that a Spanish force of 1600 men, which had been brought from the coast of the South Sea, lay encamped at Tubucantece, waiting there till a Spanish squadron of eleven ships which was expected should arrive, when they were jointly to attack the fort. The military command was offered to Captain Campbell, in compliment to his reputation and to his birth, who was descended from the families of Breadalbane and Athole. In order to prevent a joint attack, he resolved to attack first; and therefore, on the second day after his arrival, he marched with 200 men to Tubucantece, before his arrival was known to the enemy, stormed the camp in the night-time, dissipated the Spanish force with much slaughter, and returned to the fort the fifth day: But he found the Spanish ships before the harbour, their troops landed, and almost all hopes of help or provision cut off; yet he stood a siege near six weeks, till almost all the officers were dead, the enemy by their approaches had cut off his wells, and his balls were so far expended, that he was obliged to melt the pewter dishes of the garrison into balls. The garrison then capitulated, and obtained not only the common honours of war and security for the property of the company, but, as if they had been conquerors, exacted hostages for performance of the conditions. Captain Campbell alone desired to be excepted from the capitulation, saying, he was sure the Spaniards could not forgive him the mischief which he so lately had done them. The brave, by their courage, often escape that death which they seem to provoke: Captain Campbell made his escape in his vessel, and, stopping nowhere, arrived safely at New York, and from thence to Scotland, where the company presented him with a gold medal, in which his virtue was commemorated, to inflame his family with the love of heroic actions. And the Lord Lyon King at Arms, whose office it is in Scotland (and such offices should be everywhere) to confer badges of distinction according to the rules of heraldry upon honourable actions, gave him a Highlander and an Indian for supporters to his coat of arms.

A harder fate attended those whom Captain Campbell left at Darien. They were so weak in their health as not to be able to weigh up the anchors of the Rising Sun, one of their ships, which carried 60 guns: But the generous Spaniards assisted them. In going out of the harbour she ran aground: The prey was tempting; and to obtain it, the Spaniards had only to stand by and look on: but showed that mercy to the Scots in distress, which one of the countrymen of those Scots, General Elliot, returned to the politery of the Spaniards at the end of the late conflagration at the siege of Gibraltar. The Darien ships being leaky and weakly manned, were obliged in their voyage to take shelter in different ports belonging to Spain and England. The Spaniards in the new world showed them kindness; the English governments showed them none; and in one place one of their ships was seized and detained. Of these only Captain Campbell’s ship and another small one were saved: The Royal Sun was lost on the bar of Charlestown; and of the colony, not more than 30, saved from war, shipwreck, or disease, ever saw their country again.

Paterson, who had stood the blow, could not stand the reflection of misfortune. He was seized with a lunacy in his passage home after the ruin of the first colony; but he recovered in his own country, where his spirit, still ardent and unbroken, presented a new plan to the company, founded on the idea of King William, that England should have the joint dominion of the settlement with Scotland.

He survived many years in Scotland, pitied, respected, but neglected. After the union of the two kingdoms, he claimed reparation of his losses from the equivalent-money given by England to the Darien Company, but got nothing; because a grant to him from a public fund would have been only an act of humanity, not a political job.

Thus ended the colony of Darien. Men look into the works of poets for subjects of satire; but they are more often to be found in the records of history. The application of the Dutch to King William against the Darien Company, affords the surest of all proofs, that it was the interest of the British islands to support it. England, by the imprudence of ruining that settlement, lost the opportunity of gaining and continuing to herself the greatest commercial empire that probably ever will be upon earth. Had she treated with Scotland, in the hour of the distress of the company, for a joint possession of the settlement, or adopted the union of the kingdoms, which the sovereign of both proposed to them, that possession could certainly have been obtained. Had she treated with Spain to relinquish an imaginary right, or at least to give a passage. across the isthmus, upon receiving duties so high as to overbalance all the chance of loss by a contraband trade, she had probably obtained either the one or the other. Had she broke with Spain for the sake of gaining by force one of those favours, she would have lost far less than she afterwards did by carrying a war into that country for many years, to force a king upon the Spaniards against their will. Even a rupture with Spain for Darien, if it had proved successful, would have knit the two nations together by the most solid of ties, their mutual interest; for the English must then have depended upon Spain for the safety of their caravans by land; and the Spaniards upon England for the safety of their fleets by sea. Spain and England would have been bound together as Portugal and England have long been; and the Spanish treasuries have failed, under the wings of English navies, from the Spanish main to Cadiz, in the same manner as the treasuries of Portugal have failed under the same protection, sacred and untouched, from the Brazils to Lisbon.

It has been made a question, Whether King William behaved with his ordinary sincerity and steadfastness, in the assurances of favour which he gave more than once to the company during their difficulties. The following anecdote makes it probable, that there was a struggle in his breast between the part which he was obliged to act to please his English and Dutch at the expense of his Scots subjects and his own feelings. A provision ship of the first colony, in which were 30 gentlemen passengers, and some of them of noble birth, having been shipwrecked at Carthagena, the Spaniards believing, or pretending to believe, that they were smugglers, cast them into a dungeon and threatened them with death. The company deputed Lord Basil Hamilton from Scotland to implore King William's protection for the prisoners. The king at first refused to see him, because he had not appeared at court when he was last in London. But when that difficulty was removed by explanation, an expression fell from the king which showed his sense of the generous conduct of another, although influenced by the English and Dutch East India Companies, he could not resolve to imitate it in his own. For Lord Basil's audience having been put off from time to time, but at last fixed to be in the council-chamber after a council was over, the king, who had forgot the appointment, was pacing into another room, when Lord Basil placed himself in the passage, and said, "That he came commissioned by a great body of his majesty's subjects to lay their misfortunes at his feet; that he had a right to be heard, and would be heard." The king returned, listened with patience, gave instant orders to apply to Spain for redress; and then turning to those near him, said, "This young man is too bold, if any man can be too bold in his country's cause." I had this anecdote from the present Earl of Selkirk, grandson to Lord Basil.

King William's desertion of a company erected upon the faith of his own charter, and the English oppressions of it, were the reasons why so many of the Scots, during four successive reigns, disliked the cause of the Revolution and of the Union. And that dislike, joined to English dissents, brought upon both countries two rebellions, the expenditure of many millions of money, and (which is a far greater loss) the downfall of many of their noblest and most ancient families.—Sir John Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. ii.