on this day dos - the scots did a hing

2nd November 1698 Scottish settlers make landfall in Panama, establishing the ill-fated 'Darien Venture' colony

Q - how did that work oot for ye hamish?

A 1 - (care of colonist Roger Oswald) ‘{Flour rations} When boiled with a little water, without anything else, big maggots and worms must be skimmed off the top… In short, a man might easily have destroyed his whole week’s ration in one day and have but one ordinary stomach neither… Yet for all this short allowance, every man (let him never be so weak) daily turned out to work by daylight, whether with the hatchet, or wheelbarrow, pick-axe, shovel, fore-hammer or any other instrument the case required; and so continued until 12 o’clock, and at 2 again and stayed till night, sometimes working all day up to the headbands of the breeches in water at the trenches. My shoulders have been so wore with carrying burdens that the skin has come off them and grew full of boils. If a man were sick and obliged to stay within, no victuals for him that day. Our Councillors all the while lying at their ease, sometimes divided into factions and, being swayed by particular interest, ruined the public… Our bodies pined away and grew so macerated with such allowance that we were like so many skeletons.’

A 2 -