ing of order and
the calming of evil passions. Unfortunately those divines seem to have
been at war with almost all the rest of the society. They described
their companions as the most profligate of mankind, and declared that it
was impossible to constitute a presbytery according to the directions
of the General Assembly; for that persons fit to be ruling elders of
a Christian Church were not to be found among the twelve or thirteen
hundred emigrants. Where the blame lay it is now impossible to decide.
All that can with confidence be said is that either the clergymen must
have been most unreasonably and most uncharitably austere, or the laymen
must have been most unfavourable specimens of the nation and class to
which they belonged.

It may be added that the provision by the General Assembly for the
spiritual wants of the colony was as defective as the provision made for
temporal wants by the directors of the Company. Nearly one third of the
emigrants who sailed with the second expedition were Highlanders, who
did not understand a word of English; and not one of the four chaplains
could speak a word of Gaelic. It was only through interpreters that a
pastor could communicate with a large portion of the Christian flock
of which he had charge. Even by the help of interpreters he could not
impart religious instruction to those heathen tribes which the Church
of Scotland had solemnly recommended to his care. In fact, the colonists
left behind them no mark that baptized men had set foot on Darien,
except a few Anglo-Saxon curses, which, having been uttered more
frequently and with greater energy than any other words in our language,
had caught the ear and been retained in the memory of the native
population of the isthmus.

The months which immediately followed the arrival of the new comers were
the coolest and most salubrious of the year. But, even in those months,
the pestilential influence of a tropical sun, shining on swamps rank
with impenetrable thickets of black mangroves, began to be felt. The
mortality was great; and it was but too clear that, before the summer
was far advanced, the second colony would, like the first, have to
choose between death and flight. But the agony of the inevitable
dissolution was shortened by violence. A fleet of eleven vessels under
the flag of Castile anchored off New Edinburgh. At the same time an
irregular army of Spaniards, Creoles, negroes, mulattoes and Indians
marched across the i