icane happened on that coast, as that ship lay at anchor, within
less than three leagues of Charles Town in Carolina with another
Scotch ship called the Duke of Hamilton, and three or four others;
that the ships were all shattered in pieces and all the people lost,
and not a man saved. The Rising Sun had 112 men on board. The Scotch
men that are come hither say that 15 of 'em went on shore before the
storm to buy fresh provisions at Charles Town by which means they
were saved. Two other of their ships they suppose were lost in the
Gulph of Florida in the same storm. They came all from Jamaica and
were bound hither to take in provisions on their way to Scotland. The
Rising Sun had 60 guns mounted and could have carryed many more, as
they tell me."

The colonists found a watery grave. No friendly hand nor sympathizing
tear soothed their dying moments; no clergyman eulogized their heroism,
self-sacrifice and virtues; no orator has pronounced a panegyric; no
poet has embalmed their memory in song, and no novelist has taken their
record for a fanciful story. Since their mission was a failure their
memory is doomed to rest without marble monument or graven image. To the
merciful and the just they will be honored as heroes and pioneers.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: The Darien Papers, pp. 371-417.]

[Footnote 14: "Darien Papers," pp 195, 275.]

[Footnote 15: "Documentary and Colonial History of New York," Vol. IV,
p. 591.]

[Footnote 16: _Ibid_, Vol. V, p. 335.]

[Footnote 17: "Darien Papers," p. 150.]

[Footnote 18: "Darien Papers," p. 160.]

[Footnote 19: "Darien Papers," p. 176.]

[Footnote 20: "Documents Relating to Colonial History of New York," Vol.
IV, p. 711.]

CHAPTER V.

THE HIGHLANDERS IN NORTH CAROLINA.

The earliest, largest and most important settlement of Highlanders in
America, prior to the Peace of 1783, was in North Carolina, along Cape
Fear River, about one hundred miles from its mouth, and in what was then
Bladen, but now Cumberland County. The time when the Highlanders began
to occupy this territory is not definitely known; but some were located
there in 1729, at the time of the separation of the province into North
and South Carolina. It is not known what motive caused the first
settlers to select that region. There was no leading clan in this
movement, for various ones were well represented. At the headwaters of
navigation these pioneers literally pi