backward and forward. The rigid Presbyterians
attributed the calamities of the colony to the wickedness of Jacobites,
Prelatists, Sabbath-breakers, Atheists, who hated in others that image
of God which was wanting in themselves. The accused malignants, on the
other hand, complained bitterly of the impertinence of meddling fanatics
and hypocrites. Paterson was cruelly reviled, and was unable to
defend himself. He had been completely prostrated by bodily and
mental suffering. He looked like a skeleton. His heart was broken. His
inventive faculties and his plausible eloquence were no more; and he
seemed to have sunk into second childhood.

Meanwhile the second expedition had been on the seas. It reached Darien
about four months after the first settlers had fled. The new comers had
fully expected to find a flourishing young town, secure fortifications,
cultivated fields, and a cordial welcome. They found a wilderness. The
castle of New Edinburgh was in ruins. The huts had been burned. The site
marked out for the proud capital which was to have been the Tyre, the
Venice, the Amsterdam of the eighteenth century was overgrown with
jungle, and inhabited only by the sloth and the baboon. The hearts of
the adventurers sank within them. For their fleet had been fitted out,
not to plant a colony, but to recruit a colony already planted and
supposed to be prospering. They were therefore worse provided with
every necessary of life than their predecessors had been. Some feeble
attempts, however, were made to restore what had perished. A new fort
was constructed on the old ground; and within the ramparts was built a
hamlet, consisting of eighty or ninety cabins, generally of twelve feet
by ten. But the work went on languidly. The alacrity which is the effect
of hope, the strength which is the effect of union, were alike wanting
to the little community. From the councillors down to the humblest
settlers all was despondency and discontent. The stock of provisions was
scanty. The stewards embezzled great part of it. The rations were small;
and soon there was a cry that they were unfairly distributed. Factions
were formed. Plots were laid. One ringleader of the malecontents was
hanged. The Scotch were generally, as they still are, a religious
people; and it might therefore have been expected that the influence of
the divines to whom the spiritual charge of the colony had been confided
would have been employed with advantage for the preserv