the " subscriptions sucked up all the money in the courtry." On the 26th of July 1698 the pioneers set sail from Leith amid the cheers of an almost envious multitude ; and on the 4th of November, with the loss of only fifteen out uf 12,000 men, they arrived at Darien, and took up their quarters in a well-defended spot, with a good harbour and excellent outlook. The country they named New Cale donia, and two sites selected for future cities were desig nated respectively New Edinburgh and New St Andrews. Ac first all seemed to go well ; but by and by lack of provisions, sickness, and anarchy reduced the settlers to the most miserable plight; and in June 1699 they re- embarked in three vessels, a weak and hopeless company, to sail whithersoever Providence might direct. Mean while a supplementary expedition had been prepared in Scotland ; two vessels were dispatched in May, and four ethers followed in August. But this venture proved even more unfortunate than the former. The colonists arrived broken in health ; their spirits were crushed by the fate of their predecessors, and embittered by the harsh fanati cism of the four ministers whom the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland had sent out to establish a regular presbyterial organization. The last addition to the settle ment was the company of Captain Campbell of Finub, who arrived only to learn that a Spanish force of 1500 or 1600 men lay encamped at Tubacauti, on the River Santa Maria, waiting for the appearance of a Spanish squadron in order to make a combined attack on the fort. Captain Campbell, on the second day after his arrival, marched with 200 men across the isthmus to Tubacanti, stormed the camp in the night-time, and dispersed the Spanish force. On his return to the fort on the fifth day he found it besieged by the Spaniards from the men-of-war; and, after a vain attempt to maintain its defence, he succeeded with a few companions in making his escape in a small vessel. A capitulation followed, and the Darien colony was no more. Of those who had taken part in the enterprize
only a miserable handful ever reached their native land.
DARIUS I., the son of Hystaspes, was the true consolidator of the Persian empire. His administrative ability founded a new type of government, and organized the crude mass of conquered states bequeathed him by his predeces sors. His military talents, though considerable, have been thrown into the shade by his legislative and financial ones. The originator of imperial centralization and unity, the inventor of a well-regulated system of taxation, and the introducer of an alphabetic system of writing, he found a half-dissolved amalgamation of discordant populations on his accession, and left a firmly- welded empire at his death.
In the great inscription on the rock of Behistun, where he has recorded his struggles and victories, Darius traces his descent from Achyemenes, through four ancestors all kings like himself. He seems to have stood next to the line of Cyrus in succession to the throne ; and Cyrus, when setting out on his campaign against the Massagetae, already suspected him of aiming at the crown. He accompanied Cambyses to Egypt, but was recalled by his father to the capital at the time the conspiracy was being formed against the Magian usurper Gomates, who professed to be Bardes (Smerdis in Herodotus), the brother of Cambyses. With six other Persian nobles Darius succeeded in over throwing the Magian usurpation, and pursued the pseudo- Smerdis to Sikhyuvatis, a fortress in Niscea, where he was put to death, April 2, 521 B.C. The friends of Gomates were massacred, the yearly festival of the Magophonia instituted, and the religion of Zoroaster, which had been suppressed in favour of the idolatrous worship of the Turanian (as opposed to the Aryan) Medes, was solemnly restored. Darius, now twenty-eight years old, was proclaimed king.
The first six years of his reign were occupied in suppressing the revolts which broke out throughout the empire, occasioned partly, perhaps, by the zeal with which the new monarch maintained the Zoroastrian faith, and which led him to look with special favour on the monotheistic Jews. Pretender after pretender appeared Atrines and after wards Martes, in Susiania ; Nidintabel, who called himself Nebuchadrezzar son of Nabonidus, in Babylonia; Phraortes, who claimed to be Xathrites son of Cyaxares, in Media and Parthia; Tritantachmes, in Sagartia ; Phraates, in Margiana ; (Eosdates, a second pseudo-Smerdis, in Persia itself ; and an Armenian, Aracus, in Babylon ; but they were all successively crushed by Darius or his generals. The most serious of these revolts were those in Media and Babylonia, and it was probably during the first Babylonian revolt that the long siege of Babylon mentioned by Herodotus took place, resulting in the attempted plunder of the image of Bel (518 B.C.) This siege may have introduced the otherwise unknown "Darius the Mede" into the book of Daniel (see article on Daniel). The Median Phraortes, who probably belonged to the Turanian part of the population, proved more than a match for three generals of Darius, and the king had to leave Babylon, which he had just succeeded in capturing, and take tho field in person, before the war was finished by the seizure and crucifixion of Phraortes at Ecbatana. The second capture of Babylon was followed by the execution of tho Behistun inscription, 515 B.C., in which Darius declares that he had translated " the Ancient Book," " the Text of the Divine Law (A vest a) and a Commentary of the Divine Law and the Prayer (Zend) " from Bactrian into the old Persian, and had restored it to the nations of the empire (see Oppert s translation of the Median version of the Behistun inscription in Records of the Past, vol. vii.) It must have been for the sake of this translation that the Assyrian cuneiform syllabary was simplified into an alphabet of forty characters. A revolt of Iskunka, a chief of the Sacte, was suppressed shortly after the inscription was engraved. Before this, Orcetes, governor of Sardis, who had murdered Polycrates of Samos, and aimed at making himself independent, had been put to death, as well as Aryandes, satrap of Egypt, who had issued a silver coinage of his own.
empire. An elaborate bureaucratic system was instituted, and the empire divided into a varying number of provinces, each under a governor or satrap (IcJuJiatrapdva), appointed by the king for an indefinite time, and responsible for a fixed tribute. The power of the satrap was checked by “royal clerks,” who sent annual reports of the satrap and his actions to the king, by retaining the old chiefs or kings of the province by the side of the satrap wherever possible, and by sending members of the royal family to the satrapies. Except in the border satrapies, the military power was intrusted to a separate officer, and it was only in the border provinces, accordingly, that a revolt was to be feared. It is said that the chief fortresses had each an independent commander, while in Persia proper “royal judges” went on circuit. The satrap represented the king, and had the power of life and death. The money tribute, raised probably by a land-tax, amounted, according to Mr Grote's calculation, to 4,254,000, 7740 talents (2,964,000) being paid in silver, and the rest m gold. The Indian satrapy contributed by far the most, and Persia proper paid nothing. Part of the
tribute was paid in kind, Babylonia and Assyria furnishing one-third. There were, besides, water-rates, and
