Everything went so well that the English East India Company became exceedingly jealous and not a little fearful that a powerful rival was rising in the north to challenge its hold in the Far East. In politics, in the financial world, in every way it possibly could, the English company sought to thwart the Scotchmen and upon the whole succeeded very satisfactorily in handicapping the latter. Being Scotchmen, however, they went right ahead, “satisfied of the envy of the English and of their consciousness of the advantages which were to flow to Scotland” from the Darien colony. Six ships were built, each able to carry two hundred emigrants, and on the twenty-sixth of July, 1698, the whole city of Edinburgh streamed down upon Leith to see the Darien voyagers depart, amidst the tears and praises and prayers of relations and friends, and of their countrymen. Many seamen and soldiers, whose services had been refused, because more offered themselves than were needed, were found hid in the ships, and when ordered ashore, clung to the ropes and timbers, imploring to go without reward. The colony, however, was a dismal and tragic failure. When the people arrived at Darien, the Dutch East India Company--instigated it was believed by agents of the English company--forbade the factors of their forts in that region to give help of any sort to the Scotchmen. Expecting to get supplies locally and being thus refused, “the colonists fell into diseases from bad food and want of food” and almost all of them faded and died. Eight months of horror lagged along and then the colony broke up, only a handful surviving to stagger to the ship for home. In the meanwhile, however, another crowd of thirteen hundred colonists had left Scotland for Darien amid the same hurrah, only to meet the same fate as had the first, and to send back as survivors only a pitiful remnant of thirty. Scotland laid all the blame upon England in general and the East India Company in particular and deeply smoldered the already traditional hatred between the northern and southern peoples. Withal, the Scotch African-Indian trading company kept intact, but took on the character of a more private commercial corporation. It entered in the orthodox fashion on the East India trade wherever it could circumvent the English monopoly, and to this end sent forth its young but not unpromising fleet to Indian waters, and of this fleet the _Content_ and the _Speedy Return_ were fair representatives. But see what an unhappy destiny pursues this Scotch company! Here it is, trying to recuperate from the terrible disaster of Darien, just, as they say of an invalid, getting about again, when wretched, wicked and utterly reprehensible Jack Bowen is here, in far-off Madagascar, lurking about in the woods ready to inflict upon the poor company another terrible adversity!