s or Minerals, to
be delivered above ground free of all Charges, together with the said
proportion of Pearl-fishing, Wrecks, Ambergreese, precious wood, Jewels,
Gems or Stones of value, that shall any ways be found in or upon the
said Colony or dependancies thereof, and that the remaining 19 parts
thereof do equally belong to the Company and Colony in proportion to
their respective proportions of Lands in the said Colony, they always
contributing in proportion to their respective interests to all Charges
for discovering and working the said Mines and others....

In testimony of all which Premisses, these presents are in name,
presence, and by order of the said Council General, Signed by the
Company's Secretary and Sealed with the Company's Seal, At Edinburgh the
eighth day of July One Thousand Six hundred and Ninty eight years.

C. WHY THE COLONY FAILED (1698).

+Source.+--Bishop Burnet's _History of His Own Times_, vol. iv., p.
395. (Oxford: 1833.)

... The company in Scotland, this year, set out a fleet, with a colony,
on design to settle in America: the secret was better kept than could
have been well expected, considering the many hands in which it was
lodged; it appeared at last, that the true design had been guessed, from
the first motion of it: they landed at Darien, which, by the report that
they sent over, was capable of being made a strong place, with a good
port. It was no wonder that the Spaniards complained loudly of this; it
lay so near Porto Bello and Panama on the one side, and Carthagena on
the other, that they could not think they were safe, when such a
neighbour came so near the centre of their Empire in America: the King
of France complained also of this, as an invasion of the Spanish
dominions, and offered the court of Madrid a fleet to dislodge them. The
Spaniards pressed the King hard upon this: they said, they were once
possessed of that place; and though they found it too unhealthy to
settle there, yet the right to it belonged still to them: so this was a
breach of treaties, and a violent possession of their country. In answer
to this, the Scotch pretended, that the natives of Darien were never
conquered by the Spaniards, and were by consequence a free people; they
said, they had purchased of them leave to possess themselves of that
place, and that the Spaniards abandoned the country, because they could
not reduce the natives: so the pretension of the first discovery was
made