A bracing contribution to the literature of the disastrous Scottish Darien Colony, the Central American plantation of Caledonia, which collapsed in 1700 with great loss of fortune and life. Darien Company, created to challenge the London-based Royal African and East Indian Companies. It proved the worst of all American colonial failures, as much a victim of bad planning as of English and European hostility.
Writen as a response to “Philo-Caledon’s” 1699 work, A Defence of the Scots Settlement at Darien …, it commences with a biography of colony founder, William Paterson before holding the Scots African and Indian Company accountable for its failure.
Authorship of the book has been attributed to Walter Harris by Halkett and Laing - “One Walter Herries (or Harris), surgeon to the first Expedition [to the Darien colony], was supposed by the Scots Parliament to have been the author of this Defence, which was ordered to be burnt by the hands of the hangman; and the Lords of the Treasury were required to offer a reward of £6000 Scots for the arrest of the reputed author” - as well as J. Scott’s bibliography of the Darien Company: “This is the second of the books for which Walter Herries or Harris was ordered to be prosecuted by the Scottish Parliament. The book was ordered to be burned.”
ESTC, R29058; European Americana 700/130; Halkett & Laing II, p.32; Hill, 776; Kress, 2226; Sabin, 78209; Scott, 102.
