34 THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 



other influential persons, for his project ; and the ul- 

 timate result was, that an act of parliament passed 

 the Scottish legislature, and was duly consented to 

 by King William III., authorizing and incorporating 

 the Scottish Darien Company. This was no sooner 

 done than a sudden furor seized the usually cautious 

 Scottish people. Mr. Paterson's estimate of the re- 

 quired capital was £2,000,000 sterling; and £400,000, 

 a full half of the entire specie of Scotland at that 

 period, was at once subscribed by the projector's 

 countrymen. English merchants also applied for 

 shares to a large amount, and the Hamburg capital- 

 ists entered eagerly into the speculation. This was 

 scarcely to be wondered at, for, according to Mr. 

 Paterson, the humblest shareholder was certain to 

 acquire enormous riches. The prize to be obtained, 

 according to the projector's statement, as given in Sir 

 John Dalrymple's " Memoirs of Great Britain and 

 Ireland," was no less than the exclusive possession 

 " of the door of the seas and the key of the universe, 

 which, with anything of reasonable management, 

 would enable the proprietors to give laws to both 

 oceans, and to become arbitrators of the commercial 

 world, without being liable to the fatigues, expenses, 

 dangers, or incurring the blood and guilt of Alexan- 

 der and of Csesar." This tissue of extravagance and 

 folly will give the reader some idea of the glittering, 

 prestige attached to the Isthmus of Panama by a 

 certain class of minds, from the day when Nunez de 

 Balbao descried from one of its hills the Pacific on 

 the one hand and the Atlantic on the other. 







