DARIEN, a province of South America, in the viceroyalty of New Grenada, bounded on the north-west by Panama, on the north-east by the Gulf of Darien, on the east by the province of Carthagena, on the south by Choco, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The country is for the most part mountainous and rugged, but there are interspersed plains which are very fertile, though deserted and uncultivated, and producing only a small quantity of cacao or tobacco. It is watered by a number of rivers, the streams of which wash down gold from the mountains. This province was the first place in Terra Firma where the Spaniards established themselves; but most of the settlements have since been abandoned, owing as much to the savage character of the natives as to the moist and unhealthy nature of the climate.

Darien, a great gulf on the coast of Darien. It measures twenty-six leagues from north to south, and nine from east to west. Several rivers flow into it, the largest of which is the Atrato. The coast is full of sharp and inaccessible shoals, and only'· towards the west and south are there places fit for disembarking. The limits of the gulf are sometimes extended to the sea which washes the shores of the provinces of Panama and Darien.

Darien, Isthmus of, a neck of land which unites North and South America, composed of the provinces of Panama and Veragua, belonging to the republic of Colombia. It sweeps in the form of a crescent about the great Bay of Panama on the south, and has the Gulf of Mexicoon the north. It is about 300 miles long, and generally about sixty wide, but where narrowest, between the ports of Porto Bello and Panama, only thirty-seven. This part is sometimes called the Isthmus of Panama. The country here is made up of sickly valleys and stupendous mountains, which seem to be placed as eternal barriers between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which can be distinctly seen at the same time from the summits. These mountains render it impracticable to cut a canal here, but by going to latitude 12° N. and joining the head of the lake Nicaragua to a small river which runs into the Pacific Ocean, and forming a canal thirty miles long, through a low level country, a communication might be formed between the two seas.

Darien, Scottish Colony of. Of the rise, progress, and catastrophe of this ill-fated undertaking, Sir John Dalrymple, in the second 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 Paterson, who having a strong desire to see foreign countries, made his profession the means of indulging it, by going to the new western world on the pretence of converting the Indians to the [7:7:626]religion of the old. During his residence there he became acquainted with Captain Dampier and Mr Wafer, 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 Pacific Oceans; and both of whom appear to have been men of considerable observation. But he obtained much more knowledge from men who could neither read nor write, 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. Paterson having examined the places, satisfied himself that on the Isthmus of Darien there was a tract of country running across from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 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 of forests, from which last circumstance one of them was called the island of the pines ; that the seas there were filled with turtle and the manatee or sea cow; that midway between Porto-Bello and Carthagena, but nearly fifty leagues distant from either, at a place called Acta, in the mouth of the 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 oceans were connected by a ridge of hills, which by their height created a temperate climate in the midst of the most sultry latitudes, and were sheltered by forests, but not rendered damp, because the trees grew at a distance from each other, and had very little underwood; that, contrary to the usual 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, roots and herbs; that roads might be formed 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 that this passage seemed to be pointed out by nature, as a common centre to connect together the trade and intercourse of the universe.

Paterson 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, follow the windings of many coasts, and require many winds; that vessels of seven or eight hundred tons burden are often to be met in the South Sea, navigated by not more than eight or ten hands, because these hands have little else to do than set their sails when they begin their voyage, and to take them in when they end it; that as soon as ships from Britain should get so far south as to reach the trade-wind, which seldom 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 whence the land-wind, which blows for ever from the north to the south, would carry them along the coast of Mexicointo the Bay of Panama. Thus, in going from Britain, ships would encounter no uncertain winds, except during their passage south into the latitude of the trade-wind; and in coming from India to the Bay of Panama they would meet 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, with no uncertain wind whatsoever. Gold was seen by Paterson in some places of the isthmus; and hence an island on the Atlantic side was called the Gold island, and a river on the side running to the Pacific was called the Golden river; but these were objects which he regarded not at that time, because far greater were in his eye, namely, the shortening of distances, the drawing of nations nearer to each other, the preservation of the valuable lives of seamen, and the saving in freight, and in time, so important to merchants, and to an animal whose life is of so short duration as that of man.

By this obscure Scotchman 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 whence they proceeded; 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.

Paterson’s original intention was to submit 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 in connecting the interests of her European, West Indian, American, African, and East Indian trade. Paterson, however, having few acquaintances and no protection in London, thought of drawing the public eye upon him, and ingratiating himself with moneyed men and with great men, by assisting 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 projectors in his situation; the persons to whom he applied made use of his ideas, took the credit 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, submitted his project to the Dutch, the Hamburgers, and the elector of Brandenburg; 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 export to Europe would be distributed throughout Germany. The Dutch and Hamburg merchants, although they had most interest in the project, heard him with indifference; while the elector, who had very little interest in it, received him with honour and kindness; but court arts and false reports soon lost him even that prince’s favour.

Paterson, on his return to London, formed a friendship with Mr Fletcher of Saltoun, whose mind was inflamed with the love of public good, and all whose ideas to procure it had a sublimity about them. Fletcher brought Paterson down to Scotland, presented him to the Marquis of Tweeddale, then minister for that country; and thereafter, 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 person who had adjusted the Prince of Orange’s [7:7:627]declaration at the Revolution, and whose son had married 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 thereof, for creating a trading company to Africa and the new world, with power to plant colonies and build forts, by 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 before the public, and opened a subscription for a company. The frenzy of the Scotch 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, and most of the other public bodies, subscribed. Young women threw their little fortunes into the stock; and widows sold their jointures to get the command of'money for the same purpose. Almost immediately L. 400,000 were subscribed in Scotland, although there was not at that time above L.800,000 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, satisfied him of the possibility of producing the same effect by means of the same cause, but upon a larger scale, when the Duke of Orleans 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, son of Lord Cardross, and Mr Haldane of Gleneagles, 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 L. 300,000, and the Dutch and Hamburgers L.200,000 more.

In the mean time the jealousy of trade, which has done more mischief to the commerce 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 afterwards the Commons impeached some of their own countrymen for being instrumental in erecting the company, and also some of the Scotch nation, one of whom was Lord Belhaven; that is to say, they arraigned the subjects of another country for making use of their own laws. Among six hundred legislators, notone had the sense, not to say genius, to propose a committee of both parliaments to inquire into the principles and consequences of the establishment; and if these should, upon inquiry, be found sound and beneficial, that the advantage 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 afterwards changed his Scottish ministers, and sent orders to his resident at Hamburg to present a memorial to the senate, in which he disowned the company, and warned them against all connections with it. The senate transmitted 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 the merchants, seeing the scheme discouraged by their governments, were soon intimidated; and the Dutch, Hamburg, and London merchants withdrew their subscriptions.

The Scotch, not discouraged, were rather animated by this oppression; 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 thirty-six to sixty guns, and they engaged 1200 men for the colony; amongst whom were younger sons of many of the noble and ancient families of Scotland, and sixty 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, most of them being Highlanders. The Scotch parliament, on the 5th August 1698, unanimously addressed the king to support the company. The lord president Sir Hugh Dalrymple, brother of Lord Stair, and head of the bench, and the lord advocate Sir James Stuart, head of the bar, jointly drew up 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 which had ever set out from the old to the new world.

On the 26th day of July 1698, the whole city of Edinburgh poured down to Leith to see the colony depart, amidst the tears, and prayers, and praises of relations, and friends, and 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 along with their companions. Twelve hundred men sailed in five stout ships, and arrived at Darien in two months, with the loss of only fifteen of their people. At that time it was in their power, most of them being well born, and all of them hardily bred and inured to the fatigues and dangers of the late war, to have marched from the northmost part of Mexicoto the southmost point of Chili, and to have overturned the whole empire of Spain in South America. But modest respecting their own and their country’s character, and afraid of its being alleged that they had plunder, 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 fifty pieces of cannon. On the other side of the harbour there was a mountain about a mile in height, 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, in order to prevent all surprise. To this place it was observed that the Highlanders often repaired to enjoy the cool air, and to talk of their friends whom they had left behind on their native hills. 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 [7:7:628]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 holding correspondence with the colony; and these were more or less harshly expressed, according to the temper of the different governors. The Scotch, trusting to far different treatment, and to the supplies which they expected from these colonies, had not brought sufficient provisions along with them, and fell into diseases from bad or inadequate food; but the more generous savages, by hunting and fishing for them, afforded them that relief which fellow Britons had refused. They lingered eight months, waiting in vain for assistance from Scotland, and almost all of them either died out or quitted the settlement. Paterson, who had been the first to enter the ship at Leith, was the last to go on board at Darien.

During the space of two years, while the establishment of his 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, ere the colony left Scotland. But now, on the 3d of May 1698, the Spanish ambassador at London presented a memorial to the king, in which he complained of the settlement at Darien as an encroachment on the rights of his master.

The Scotch, ignorant of the misfortunes of their colony, but provoked at this memorial, soon afterwards sent out another colony of 1300 men, to support an establishment which was now no more; but this last expedition having been more hastily prepared than the first, proved unlucky in its passage. One of the vessels was lost at sea, many men died on 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 assistance 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; and 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 this means sowed divisions in the colony. They exhausted the spirits of the people, by requiring their attendance at sermon four or five hours at a time, relieving each other by preaching alternately, but allowing no relief whatever to their hearers. The employment of one of the days set aside for religious exercise, which was Wednesday, they divided into three parts; thanksgiving, humiliation, and supplication, in which three ministers followed one another. 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 the day, upon an average of the length of the service in that age, could not occupy less than twelve hours, during which time* the colony was collected, and kept crowded together in the guard-room, which was used as a church, in a tropical climate, and in a sickly season. The preachers presented a paper to the council, which they took care to make public, requiring them to set aside a day for solemn fasting and humiliation; and, under pretence of enumerating the sins of the people, they poured out abuse on their rulers. They damped the courage of the people by continually representing hell as the termination of life to most men, because most men are sinners. Carrying the presbyterian doctrine of predestination to an extreme, they put a stop to all exertions, by showing that the consequences of these depended not on the individuals by whom they were made, but on an all-controlling and irresistible power, by which, independently of human efforts andvolitions, everything was necessarily determined. 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 doing so, wrote bitter letters to the general assembly against the characters of the colonists, and the advantages of the colony itself. One of these men, in a kind of history of the colony which he published, exulted with a savage triumph over the misfortunes of his countrymen. “They were such a rude company,” said he, “that I believe Sodom never declared such impudence in sinning as they. An 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 sickle of the wrath of God.”

The last party which joined the second colony atDarien, 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 that intelligence had been received that a Spanish force of 1600 men, which had been brought from the coast of the South Sea, lay encamped at Tubucantee, 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 as a descendant of the families of Breadalbane and Atholl. In order to prevent a joint attack, he resolved to attack first; and therefore on the second day after his arrival, he marched with two hundred men to Tubucantee, before his approach could be known to the enemy, stormed the camp in the nighttime, dissipated· the Spanish force with much slaughter, and returned to the fort the fifth day. But he found the Spanish ships off the harbour, their troops landed, and almost all hope of aid or of provisions cut off; yet he stood a sicge of nearly six weeks, until almost all the officers had died, the enemy by their approaches had cut off his wells, and his ammunition had been 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, even exacted hostages for the performance of the conditions. Captain Campbell alone desired to be excepted from the capitulation, saying, that he was sure the Spaniards would not forgive him the mischief which he so lately had done them. But the brave, by their courage, often escape that death which they seem to provoke. Captain Campbell made his escape in his vessel, and arrived safely at New York, whence he proceeded to Scotland, where the company presented him with a gold medal, in which his bravery was duly commemorated. The lord-lyon king-at-arms, whose office it is in Scotland to confer badges of distinction upon honourable actions ac∙
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cording to the rules of heraldry, also granted him a Highlander and an Indian as supporters to his coat of arms.

But 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 sixty guns; the generous Spaniards, however, assisted them. In going out of the harbour the vessel ran aground. The prey was tempting; and, to obtain it, the Spaniards had only to stand by and look on; but they showed that mercy to the Scotch in distress which one of their own countrymen, General Elliot, afterwards returned to the posterity of those Spaniards 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. But the Spaniards in the new world treated them with uniform kindness, while the English governments showed them none; and one of their ships was seized and detained. In fact, only Captain Campbell’s ship and another small one were saved. The Rising Sun was lost on the bar of Charlestown; and of the colony, not more than thirty, saved from war, shipwreck, or disease, ever returned to their native country.

Paterson, who had withstood the blow, could not endure 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 obtained by England to the Darien Company, but was paid nothing; because a grant to him from a public fund would have been only an act of humanity, and not a political job. Thus ended the colony of Darien; an adventure which, in its disastrous results, inflicted a severe blow upon Scotland, and excited feelings of deep hostility towards the English government and nation, which half a century was scarcely sufficient to extinguish.