While this statement of Monroe may possibly be true in the main, and that there was actual suffering, yet it must be borne in mind that the Highlanders were there living in a changed condition. The labor, climate, soil, products, etc., were all new to them, and to the changed circumstances the time had been too short for them to adapt themselves; nor is it probable that five acres were enough for their subsistence. The feeding of cattle, which was soon after adopted, would give them a larger field of industry. Nor was this all. Inevitable war fell upon the people; for we learn that the troop of Highland rangers, under Captain MacKay, held Fort St. Andrews "with thirty men, when the Spaniards attempted the invasion of this Province with a great number of men in the year 1737."[82] Drawing the men away from the settlement would necessarily cause more or less suffering and disarrangement of affairs. The record for the year 1738 is more extensive, although somewhat contradictory, and exhibits a strong element of dissention. Oglethorpe admitted the difficulties under which the people labored, ascribing them to the Spanish alarms, but reports that John Mohr Macintosh, pursuant to orders from the Trust, had disposed of a part of the servants to the freeholders of Darien, which encouragement had enabled the settlement to continue. "The women were a dead charge to the Trust, excepting a few who mended the Cloaths, dressed the Victuals and washed the Linnen of the Trustees Men Servants. Some of the Soldiers who were Highlanders desiring to marry Women, I gave them leave upon their discharging the Trustees from all future Charges arising from them."[83] The difficulties appear also to have arisen from the fact that the freeholders were either unable or else unwilling--which is the more likely--to perform manual labor. They labored under the want of a sufficient number of servants until they had procured some who had been indentured to the Trust for passage from Scotland. The Reverend John MacLeod, who abandoned the colony in 1741, made oath that in the year 1738 they found by experience that the produce from the land did not answer the expense of time and labor, and the voice of the people of Darien was to abandon their improvements, and settle to the northward, where they could be free from the restraints which rendered incapable of subsisting themselves and families.[84] The declaration of Alexander Monroe is still more explicit: