fetch your bread in one place, and your wine in another place, and your meat in another place, and hogs, in many places shall be under your feet at the table, and (worse and worse) lice in your bed."

Andrew relates a few extraordinary things, of some of which he was an eye-witness, such as the following: In the churches of Holland he saw many women laying their heads in priests' laps and making confession-crying forfeits, which they themselves had to pay! At Genoa he found a medicament, which he calls a "treacle:" "A man," he says, "wyll take and eate poysen, and than he wyl swel redy to borst and to dye, and as sone as he hath takyn treacle, he is hole agene." In Norway there were certain wells which possessed the property of transforming wood into iron. But concerning other marvels he is very sceptical: for instance, St. Patrick's Purgatory in Ireland possessed nothing like the efficacity" that was commonly believed of it; and there was not at Compostella one single bone of St. James, either the Greater or the Less! There is abundant internal evidence of Borde's having actually seen most of the countries and things described by him, though the 'Boke' possesses few traits of personal adventure, his object being rather to produce a work for the use of travellers than a history of his own peregrinations. The following incident, however, is worthy of attention. We make no apology, after the numerous examples we have given of Borde's orthography, for modernising it in the present instance :—

"When I did dwell in the University of Orleans, casually going over the bridge into the town, I did meet with nine English and Scottish persons going to St. Compostella—a pilgrimage to St. James. I knowing their pretence advertised them to return home to England, saying that had I rather to go five times out of England to Rome; and so I had indeed, than once to go from Orleans to Compostella; saying also that if I had been worthy to be of the king of England's council, such persons as would take such journeys on them without his license, I would set them by the feet. And that I had rather that they should die in England through my industry than to kill themselves by the way with other words I had to them of exasperation. They, not regarding my words nor sayings, said that they would go forth in their journey, and would die by the way rather than return home. I having pity they should be cast away, pointed them to my hostage, and went to dispatch my business in the University of Orleans. And after that I went with them in their journey through France, and so to Bordeaux and Bayonne, and then we entered into the barren countries of Biscay and Castile, where we could get no meat for money, yet with great hunger we did come to Compostella, where we had plenty of meat and wine, but in returning through Spain, for all the craft of physic that I could do, they died all by eating of fruits and drinking of water, the which I did ever refrain myself."

Borde complains of two "stulticious" practices among the Welsh. One of them is, we fear, by no means extinct—that of selling their lambs, calves, and crops, before they are produced.

"The second stulticious matter is that if any of their friends do die, when they shall be buried and put into the grave, in certain places, they will cry out, making an exclamation, and saying, O venit, that is to say, O sweeting, why dost thou die? Thou shalt not go from us! And will put away the corse saying, vinit, we will die with thee, or else thou shalt tarry with us; with many other foolish words, as the Castilians and the Spaniards do say and do at the burying of their friends. This did I see here in Ruthyn, and Oswestry, and other places."

The Boke of Knowledge' must have been in its day a valuable as well as a curious production. By its means, the merchant, the pilgrim, and the traveller were enabled not only to make themselves in some degree acquainted with the character of the peoples with whom they were to be in communication—and the national traits given are, in general, extremely correct even to the present hour;but also to learn the names of their coins, and to speak a few ordinary phrases of their languages. It is essentially a traveller's vademecum, and those who like to trace things to their sources may find in it the germ of those correct, agreeable, and useful companions of a tour, 'Murray's Handbooks.'

As a finale to this brief notice of a very singular book, we give Borde's version of the miracle of St. James of Compostella, familiar already, in a slightly different form, to the readers of Mrs. Jamieson's 'Legendary Art.' A young pilgrim has refused the love of a certain damsel of St. Domingo :

"The wench repleted with malice for the said cause, of an evil pretence conveyed a silver piece into the bottom of the young man's scrip; he, with his father and mother, and other pilgrims, going forth in their journey, the said wench raised officers of the town to pursue after the pilgrims, and took them, finding the aforesaid piece in the young man's scrip; wherefore they brought to the town the young man, and he was condemned to be hanged, and was hanged upon a pair of gallows (whosoever that is hanged beyond sea shall never be cut or pulled down, but shall hang still on the gallows or gibbet); the father and the mother of the young man, with other of the pilgrims, went forth in their pilgrimage. And when they returned again, they went to the said gallows, to pray for the young man's soul. When they did come to the place, the young man did speak, and said, I am not dead: God, and his servant Saint James, hath here preserved me alive; therefore go you to the justice of the town, and bid him come hither and let me down; upon the which words they went to the justice,—he sitting at supper, having in his dish two great chickens, the one was a hen chick, and the other a cock chick. The messengers, showing him this wonder, and what he should do, the justice said to them: This tale that you have shewed me, is as true as

And as soon as the

these two chickens before me doth stand up and crow! words were spoken, they stood in the platter and did crow; whereupon the justice, with procession, did fetch in alive from the gallows that said young man, and for a remembrance of this stupendous thing, the priests and other credible persons shewed me that they do keep still in a cage in the church, a white cock and a hen. I did see a cock and a hen there in the church, and do tell the fable as it was told me, not of three or four persons, but of many.”

ART. VI. The Scottish Colony of Darien, 1698-1700.

The History of Caledonia, or the Scots Colony of Darien, in the West Indies; with an Account of the Manners of the Inhabitants and Riches of the Country. By a Gentleman lately arrived. London: 1699.

Caledonia; or the Pedlar turn'd Merchant, a Tragi-Comedy, as it was acted by his Majesty's subjects of Scotland in the King of Spain's Province of Darien. 4to. London: 1700.

The History of Darien. By the Rev. FRANCIS BORLAND, sometime Minister of the Gospel at Glassford, and one of the Ministers who went with the last Colony to Darien. Written mostly in 1700, while the author was in the American regions. 2d Ed. Glasgow: 1779.

The Darien Papers; being a Selection of Original Letters and Official Documents relating to the establishment of a Colony at Darien by the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies, 1695-1700. 4to. Edinburgh 1849.

THE enterprises of Scotland beyond sea, although obscure in

many details, present, nevertheless, certain well authenticated facts which place our neighbours north of the Tweed fairly on our level in point of ability and of energy, even if their undertakings of that kind have not always had the deserved success. Patrick Macdowall, an adventurer in the great expedition to be here described from original papers, was amply justified in his boast, that "the Scotch would no way succumb to the English designs of overawing them; but to the last drop of their blood maintain the character which Charlemayne, in his league with their Achaius, believed they merited."* But the maritime and colonial annals of

* Journal of the Voyage of the Ship Margaret, of Dundee. (Darien Papers, p. 309.) The commission given by the directors of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies, ordered the Margaret's commander not to suffer her “to be insulted by the ships of war of any nation, nor to be searched, nor her men to be pressed; but he was by force of arms to defend his trade and navigation, pursuant to his privilege granted by act of Parliament,--unless such ships of war were authorised by the king, and the orders were countersigned by the king, or his Secretary of State for the kingdom of Scotland.-5 March, 1700." (Ib. p. 307.)

Scotland may be searched with advantage, without going so far back as to the Emperor of the Franks, for a testimony to her honour. More modern Scottish sovereigns than Achaius were eminent patrons of nautical adventure. James the Second was a good sailor, and a spirited supporter of colonies. Henry, the elder son of James the First, gave promise of becoming one day skilful in marine affairs, and he zealously promoted them in his youth. If this prince had lived, the plan of Sir James Campbell, in his time, for cutting a ship-passage through the Isthmus of Panama, might have been followed out. James the Fifth, father of Mary Queen of Scots, greatly encouraged nautical science, at a time when at least one intelligent Scotch seaman accompanied Magellan, the first circumnavigator; and when a distinguished French geographer gives the palm of maritime superiority to the Danes and English, who must in that testimony have included the Scotch. In our time colonisation, sunk to the lowest ebb in England, found enlightened advocacy from the pen of the Earl of Selkirk; and this Scottish nobleman made the greatest efforts to relieve his tenantry and neighbours, by a well-conceived system of emigration, which a monopolising company opposed and the government neglected. Nor will it be thought trivial to refer, on this head, to the solitary Scottish seaman, Alexander Selkirk, whose story in the hands of a man of genius, the author of 'Robinson Crusoe' has been a remarkable stimulant to sea-adventure in every country of Europe.

But it was in the reign of William the Third that the Scotch attempted to extend foreign trade and colonies, with an enthusiasm and upon a scale of which no other people have given so striking an example, in proportion to their wealth and numbers. This enterprise the Darien Colony, founded in 1698, and broken up in 1700—was a part only of the great design of "the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and to India." That design had in view the general commercial improvement of Scotland; and it aimed at extending trade to the north of Europe, as well as to the east and west.. The company had originally more than half its shareholders in England, Holland, and Germany, who withdrew, in consequence of the jealousy of the older East India Companies; and in obedience to the malignant injunctions of the English parliament, who impeached the leading Scottish adventurers for raising money in Eugland to support the company. This treatment only the more vehemently roused the national spirit of the Scotch, and they alone provided all the funds needed for the work. Hence the

Darien colony of Caledonia assumed an exclusively Scottish character, preserved to this day upon the maps, in the name of Port Escoces, the bay in which their colony was founded on the Spanish main. The interest taken in the company in England at the first, was afterwards appealed to with great sagacity by the original projector, Paterson; and, upon that occasion, King William's sudden death alone prevented the Darien enterprise acquiring an important influence upon the political state of Europe. It was indeed a striking merit in the whole scheme that, from first to last, it had a cosmopolitan character; and that, even at the moment when ill-treatment goaded the Scotch almost into open war with England, the originator of the Darien enterprise never ceased to advocate the union of the two countries as a general good.

The two chief actors in this energetic attempt to extend commerce and civilisation, have received unequal notice in Scottish annals. One of them, Fletcher of Salton, is familiar to all as the inflexible patriot, the earnest orator, the acute political writer; and his authority in regard to the condition of his countrymen in his time, is a standard without appeal. The other, William Paterson of Dumfriesshire, a far more important party to the company which he had founded, and to the expedition which he accompanied to Darien, is scarcely admitted by the best informed modern Scottish authors to be entitled to more than the doubtful praise of a mere projector.

Mr. H. Burton, the most recent of those authors, who was appointed by the Bannatyne Club to edit the Darien Papers, says of Paterson, in the Criminal Trials in Scotland,' that although "usually called the founder of the Bank of England, it would be more correct to call him its projector. That he first laid out the design of that great corporation is admitted by all who have written on its history; but his name was not practically associated with it as a director. It has been usual to say that Paterson was ungratefully superseded by the plodding capitalists, for whose slower wits he had designed a solid fortune. But his connexion with the Darien scheme showed that his capacity lay far more in projecting, than in executing; and it is quite possible, that his name was unknown in the history of the bank, simply because his colleagues found it necessary to prevent him from practically obstructing the project he had so ingeniously designed."— (Criminal Trials in Scotland, p. 107).

The extraordinary error of Mr. Burton as to Paterson's "prac