ABSTRACT
Upon the 26th of July, the expedition sailed from Leith, 1200 men, among whom were younger sons of many of the most noble and most ancient families in Scotland, and sixty officers who had been disbanded at the peace, and carried with them private men, generally raised on their own or the estates of their relations, in five large ships. They arrived at Darien in two months, with the loss of only fifteen of their people, and fixed their station at Acta, calling it St. Andrew. 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 a fort, planting upon it fifty pieces of cannon. On the other side of the harbour there was a mountain a mile high, on which they placed a watch-house: and this was a favourite spot of the highlanders. The Scots, trusting to being supplied from the colonies, had not brought provisions enough with them: want of these brought on diseases. " But the savages, by hunting and fishing for them, gave them that relief which fellow Britons refused." They lingered eight months, expecting assistance from Scotland, during which time almost all of them either died or quitted the settlement. Patterson, who had been the first that entered the ship at Leith, was the last who went on board at Darien.