vitable 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:

"That in December, 1738, the said inhabitants of Darien finding that
from their first settling in Georgia, their labors turned to no
account, that their wants were daily growing on them, and being weary
of apprehension, they came to a resolution to depute two men, chosen
from amongst them, to go to Charleston, in South Carolina, and there
to make application to the government, in order to obtain a grant of
lands to which the whole settlement of Darien to a man were to remove
altogether, the said