Though a Scot, he did not drink. He believed in freedom of religion, and he deplored slavery. He believed, too, in free trade, a heretical doctrine at that time. He had faith in the future of his fellowmen.
There was, however, one bee in this man’s bonnet. He was in love with Panama, and specifically with that portion of the isthmus known as Darien, the place at which Balboa had crossed. It was only a spot on the map to him, but an ideal spot. He called it, in the prospectus he drew up, “the key of the Indies and door of the world,” and also “this door of the seas, and the key of the universe.” He did not propose a canal, and only implied the construction of an interoceanic highway, but he firmly believed that the people who guarded this gateway would be the pivotal people of the world. Everything would go through these people, he argued. Theirs would be the most important international mart, even more important than Constantinople had been. They would trade in everything, making fortunes. He was not thinking of war or conquest, only of trade. It did not seem to have occurred to him that Spain, notoriously jealous of her New World claims, would object to the establishment of such a market.
Others objected as well. When he raised the subject in London, Paterson found himself opposed by the East India Company, for, grandiose as his idea was, he had spoken as well of India, suggesting that the Darien colony and trading post would not be limited to deals in the Caribbean area. The Company put pressure upon the king, who in consequence frowned upon Paterson’s proposal.
The king was William III, a Dutchman brought in when the Roman Catholic Stuarts were kicked out. He did not have a drop of Stuart blood in his veins, but he was married to a Stuart, Mary, and this had to do. He was undeniably a Protestant.
William III was king not only of England but of Scotland as well. But these were separate principalities, separately ruled. There had been a growing movement to bring them together, with one parliament, one cabinet, a movement to which William Paterson liberally contributed; but at this time they were still separate.
Paterson went to the Continent, but in Hamburg as in Amsterdam he found himself opposed by the Dutch East India Company, an exceedingly powerful organization, and he could raise no funds.
Baffled, he turned to his own native land.
It might have been supposed that Scotland was the worst place in all the world in which to finance a far-off colony, but William Paterson was used to doing the impossible. In short order he had signed up 1,400 subscribers, eight of them for £3,000 each, 640 for £100 each; the average was £285. Earls and artisans alike came in. Nobody knew where this mysterious colony was about to be planted, and nobody knew why—it was not until after the sailing, with sealed Orders, that the organization was given the name of the Darien Company—but everybody seethed with excitement, expecting to make millions. The warehouse in Miln Square, Edinburgh, soon was filled to overflowing.
The Bank of Scotland had a monopoly, and the Bank of Scotland was leery of the Paterson plan, Standing off. This did not faze Paterson, who called his financial Setup not a bank but a “fund of credit,” which worked just as well.
Paterson himself trusted too far a private banker, a man named Smyth who absconded with a large sum of the fund-of-credit s cash; and for this, though nobody thought that he was in any way dishonest, Paterson was ruled off the board of directors. Still full of zeal, he stuck to the enterprise as an unpaid volunteer.
Sixty military officers thrown out of work by the Peace of Ryswick signed on, as did hundreds of others, many of them good-for-nothings. When at last the expedition got under way in the early spring of 1699, scores of would-be stowaways had to be hauled out of the holds and dumped upon the beach.
A special flag had been designed, and this was flown. It showed a gold sun rising out of a blue sea against a red sky. A grant of arms was made to the Company, with this same design, to which had been added the motto cua panditur orbis vis unita fortior and supporters consisting of one naked and very dark man, presumably representing Africa, and one equally naked but not so dark, who might have been taken to stand for either America or East India.
Scotland had no shipyard, and English dealers had been forbidden to sell the Darien Company any kind of vessel, so three large ships besides two smaller vessels (a pink and a snow) had been purchased on the Continent. None of them was in very good condition. The Scots, un-like the English, were not wise in the ways of the sea.
The stores, the goods with which these starry-eyed men planned to Start their trade, were amazing. They included 4,000 pairs of men’s coarse stockings and 2,000 pairs of women’s; 1,500 pairs of slippers; between 5,000 and 6,000 pairs of heavy shoes, presumably for the Indians, who didn’t wear shoes or much else; 4,000 wigs; 1,500 English Bibles.
There was a serious shortage of food supplies, yet when the West Indies were reached the settlers were shocked to learn that they could not restock, even though they offered cash, because the Dutch and the English had instructed their traders in those parts to have nothing to do with the venture.
On the other hand, there was a great deal of beer and even more of French brandy. (The consumption of usquebaugh, that fiery potion the name of which was later to be shortened to whisky, at this time was largely confined to the Highlands, and the Darien venture was a Lowlands enterprise.)
They made the shore of Darien somehow, and they picked a place they called Caledonia Bay, where they built a fort and town that they named, of course, New Edinburgh. They were in a state of near-anarchy. The charter under which they found themselves operating provided that a council of seven should rule them, one member of this body being in supreme command for a week at a time only. Since the councillors all hated one another, this meant that every week all the previous regulations were rescinded and a whole new batch was imposed. William Paterson was not a member of the council.
There was no trade. There was never any. The Indians were friendly enough, but they had no need for the stockings, the shoes, the wigs.
There was a great deal of drunkenness. There were three slab-sided Presbyterian ministers who shook sad heads, deploring everything, but there was no physician. On shipboard scurvy had reigned; on land it was malaria, cholera, and yellow fever. Of that first party, numbering 1,200, 744 died, and only a handful ever got back to Scotland in one of the five vessels, late in November of 1699.
Meanwhile a second Company, not having heard of the evacuation of New Edinburgh, had started forth. It numbered 1,300, and it met with the same fate as the first, a fate in this case hurried by the Spaniards from Porto Bello, who descended upon the little settlement in overwhelming numbers. The Spanish commander, himself threatened with a mutiny, for his men too were dying like flies, gave the intrepid settlers good terms: they could depart with their golden-sun-on-a-blue-sea flag flying and they could even keep many of their small arms. Some few of these persons reached the mainland of North America, and fewer still actually got back to Scotland, though they would never be the same again. Most of them were stranded in the West Indies, where wages were minuscule and white men not wanted.
There was even a third sailing, but this one, after gazing upon the ruins of the fort, over which a Spanish flag flew, wisely turned back.
The whole thing had been an unmitigated mishap. It had cost optimistic Scots £-300,000, a national calamity, and there was nothing to show for it but an appalling batch of obituaries.
There was also left a great deal of hard feeling, for the shocked Scots blamed England for the failure, and believed that they had been tricked, an attitude that delayed the union of the two kingdoms (a union that had been imminent) for another eight years.
And darkness and decay, the snakes and the mosquitoes, together with a soggy silence, once again took over the key of the universe.
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