Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . ds. So ended the effortto make of Darien anoutpost of Scotland. In the effort 2000 lives and over £200,000 had beenlost. Macaulay explains it by saying, It wasfolly to suppose that men born and bred withinten degrees of the Arctic circle would enjoy excel-lent health within ten degrees of the equator. ButLord Macaulay forgot, to reckon on the hostility of the East India Company, whose monopoly wasthreatened, the plenteousness of the brandy andthe zeal of the four ministers. After the expulsionof the Scotch, the dom-ination of the Isthmusby the Spa
Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . ds. So ended the effortto make of Darien anoutpost of Scotland. In the effort 2000 lives and over £200,000 had beenlost. Macaulay explains it by saying, It wasfolly to suppose that men born and bred withinten degrees of the Arctic circle would enjoy excel-lent health within ten degrees of the equator. ButLord Macaulay forgot, to reckon on the hostility of the East India Company, whose monopoly wasthreatened, the plenteousness of the brandy andthe zeal of the four ministers. After the expulsionof the Scotch, the dom-ination of the Isthmusby the Spaniards wasnever again seriouslymenaced by any foreignpower. All the vastSouth and CentralAmerican domain waslost to Spain, not bythe attacks of her Eu-ropean neighbors, butby the revolt of theirpeople against a gov-ernment which was atone time inefficientand tyrannical. The French Revolution and theNapoleonic upheaval in Europe found their echo inSouth America, where one after another the variousstates threw off the Spanish yoke. But Panama,. THE WATER GATE OF PANAMA then known as Terra Firma, was slow to join in therevolutionary activities of her neighbors. It is truethat in 1812 the revolutionists became so active inBogota, the capital of the province, that the seat ofgovernment was temporarily removed to PanamaCity. But the country as a whole was sluggish. THE REPEATED REVOLUTIONS OP PANAMA 107 Four classes of citizens, European Spaniards, theirsons, born on the Isthmus, and called Creoles, theIndians and the negroes, made up the populationand were too diverse by birth and nature to unitefor any patriotic purpose. Accordingly throughthe period of breaking shackles, which made Bolivarfamous the world over and created the great groupof republics in South America, the state of which theIsthmus was a part remained quiescent. In 1814revolutionists vainly tried to take Porto Bello, butthat famous fortress which never resisted a foreignfoe successfully, beat off the patriots. Pana
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