History And Adventure In Panama
by Matthew Atlee
The Scottish colony was something I read about long after I had been in Panama and had lived in the countryside and found a job in the city and had learned a little about life in the city. I didn’t really know what part of Panama the colony had been founded in; it turned out the colony was located in a place that was almost impossible to reach by boat, air or land. I would have to take a flight, then rent a boat and finally negotiate my way through the San Blas Islands in order to reach the Bay of Caledonia as the Scots had named the place where they had established themselves in Panama. It was easier to reach the bay from Colombia I was told later. One of the important things I also learned later was that the Scottish colony was located near the town of Acla, which like the Scottish colony, no longer existed. Acla was as important as the Scottish colony, if not more – it was the spot where Vasco Nuñez de Balboa in 1514 began his second crossing of the Panamanian Isthmus in order to explore the Pacific Ocean for Spain. Acla, the town Balboa had founded, was also the place where he was executed by the governor of Panama in 1519: Pedro Arias d’Avilia also known as Pedrarias. In an interesting side note the conqueror of the Inca Empire, Pizarro, was also there when Balboa was executed.
The Scottish colony was originally the idea of William Patterson, a Scottish merchant who had spent most of his life outside of Scotland. Patterson was from the lowlands of Scotland, but his childhood and his leaving Scotland are shrouded in mystery. He must have been extremely intelligent and shrewd as he is given credit for the founding of the Bank of England in 1694. Patterson, two decades before the founding of the Bank, had spent his 20s in the Caribbean as a merchant. He spent seven or eight years in the Caribbean and during that time his movements and actions are not very well known. He traded no doubt and pushed himself as close as he could to the lawless men that had made parts of the Caribbean British. He would have wanted to know the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan, who at the time of Patterson’s stay in the Caribbean would have been deputy governor of Jamaica and a plantation owner. It’s said that while in Jamaica, Patterson was involved in an attempt to resettle the volcanic island of Providence off the east coast of Nicaragua. Providence Island was home to a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2749 colony from 1630 until 1641. The Spanish eventually ran the Puritans off the island: the island was a pirate safehaven before, during and after the Puritans settled the island.During his time in Jamaica Paterson had heard about a place at the very bottom of the Caribbean that was supposedly free of Spanish garrisons yet located on the Isthmus of Panama. Many British pirates had sailed to this part of the Caribbean to try to steal gold and silver from the Spanish in Panama. The pirates talked of an island called the Golden Island which was located right in front of a small bay. It was said that from the bay you could find a path that led across the Isthmus of Panama and, once across, you could strike at the Spanish in Panama City. The bay was located in a province of Panama called Darien.
Of course, the pirates were talking about and walking Balboa’s old route across. The hike to the Pacific took you through a thick jungle that covered the Continental Divide; the Gulf of San Miguel was at the other end of the trail; the distance of the trail was 40 to 50 kilometers.
http://www.escapeartist.com/efam/75/Travel_To_San_Blas.html