WILLIAM THE THIRD.

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year. But, even in those months, the pestilential influenceof a tropical sun, shining on swamps rank with impenetrablethickets of black mangroves, began to be felt. The mor-tality was great; and it was but too clear that, before thesummer was far advanced, the second colony would, likethe first, have to choose between death and flight. But theagony of the inevitable dissolution was shortened byviolence. A fleet of eleven vessels under the flag of Castileanchored off New Edinburgh. At the same time an irre-gular army of Spaniards, creoles, negroes, mulattoes andIndians marched across the isthmus from Panama; and thefort was blockaded at once by sea and land.

A drummer soon came with a message from thebesiegers, but a message which was utterly unintelligibleto the besieged. Even after all that we have seen ofthe perverse imbecility of the directors of the Company,it must be thought strange that they should have sent acolony to a remote part of the world, where it was certainthat there must be constant intercourse, peaceable or hos-tile, with Spaniards, and yet should not have taken carethat there should be in the whole colony a single personwho knew a little Spanish.

With some difiiculty a negotiation was carried on insuch French and such Latin as the two parties couldfurnish. Before the end of March a treaty was signed bywhich the Scotch bound themselves to evacuate Darien infourteen days; and on the eleventh of April they departed,a much less numerous body than when they arrived. In