CHAPTER XII
The Past and the Present Panama
A Visit Planned and Given Up—Difficulties—Buccaneer Henry Morgan and President Don Juan Perez de Guzman—Story of Morgan’s Expedition against Panama—Prayers Versus Prowess—Starvation—Waiting Ambuscaders—Leather Soup—The Miraculous Feeding—Breakfast Food for Those Who Could not Walk—Making a New Road—Repulse of Don Juan’s Cavalry—Repulse of the Cattle—Flanking Movement—Victory—Fire—Booty—The Filibusters Filibustered by Morgan—Great Britain and Captain Dampier—Chances for the Poet, Tourist, Artist, Antiquarian and Lover—Something New—Panama has Changed Hands—But for Uncle Sam There’d be Something Doing in Panama.
Doctor Echeverría and Señor Arango had planned a trip to the old city of Panama, the old-gold city, founded in 1518 by Don Pedro d’Avila, sacked in 1673 by Sir Henry Morgan, the buccaneer, and rebuilt on its present semi-peninsular site, where it is inaccessible to buccaneers and inconvenient for business. But it was a whole day’s trip and there was no hotel to serve us with a déjeuné à-la-fourchette and a siesta. Besides, we would have to find a guide to keep us from falling into cellars and holes overgrown and concealed by such profusion of vegetation as only the tropics can produce in two hundred years. The doctor, rather than trust to a guide, thought it better to trust in God only and stay away, for it was a God-forsaken place.
Two hundred years ago the citizens made their Creator ashamed of them by succumbing to a band of exhausted and half-starved buccaneers. Sir Henry Morgan and his men nearly perished of hunger in trying to cross the isthmus while Don Juan Perez de Guzman, president of Panama, was praying and eating, and keeping tab on Morgan’s progress and his own prayers, instead of pleasing God by killing pirates. God is not always pleased with mere praying. He favors doing, and sometimes fighting, as the following narrative would seem to indicate.
Montebello, the Colón of olden times, was situated near the mouth of the Chagres River. Sir Henry Morgan captured and sacked the town and sent word to Don Juan Perez de Guzman that he would call upon him soon in Panama. He was desirous of seeing the city where gold-dust blew about and blinded people, where the cathedral was crusted over with shells of pearl and filled with ornaments of silver, and the trees were hung and festooned with jewels to keep them off the grass. He wanted his share. The world owed him a living, etc.
He made good his promise the next year (1670), thoroughly prepared for the work. He first captured Fort San Lorenzo that guarded or should have guarded the entrance of the river—and Don Juan P. de G., began to watch and pray. Don Juan considered himself a better man than the pirate, and thought that the Lord was with him. But he did wrong to think. Meanwhile, Captain Morgan, with 1,200 men and provisions for one day, started merrily up the Chagres River. Food was too bulky to carry, and about all he had would be needed by those he left in charge of San Lorenzo. Besides, he did not go to eat; he went to fight. He took, however, five large scows laden with artillery and ammunition to offset the thinking and praying of Don Juan. God helps them who help themselves, and Morgan was prepared to help himself.
Ambuscading parties showed themselves in the distance occasionally, but they were to do the watching part of Don Juan’s program and always retired before Morgan got near enough to shoot and eat any of them. Instead of fighting and letting him capture their food, they retired and ate the food themselves, saying: “He who eats and runs away will live to run another day.”
Poor Morgan! The food lasted one happy day. On the second day the 1,200 went hungry. On the third day they found the river obstructed by fallen trees. So a portion of the buccaneers carried the canoes over the obstacles while the rest cut their way through the dense vegetation beside the river. All of the artillery and ammunition that could not be thus transported had to be left. But Morgan kept right on to the surprise of the well-fed watchers.
RUINED TOWER OF OLD PANAMA
On the fourth day the filibusters found some dried hides at Torna Caballos, cut them into strips, made a stew and filled themselves. Such a meal ought to have staid by their stomachs for a week. At noon of the fifth day they found two bags of meal in the deserted village of Barbacoas, and accomplished the miracle of feeding 1,200 men with two bags of meal.
Some of the men were by this time so weak that they had to be carried into the boats, while many of those who could walk wanted to turn back. Yet they kept on, concluding that they might as well starve going forward as going backward.
On the sixth day they found a plantation with a barn full of maize, for the ambuscaders had expected them to starve or turn back before reaching this plantation, and had not destroyed the maize. Nor did they defend it. Their business was to watch, and they could not watch and fight at the same time. The 1,200 thus had their fill of breakfast food, and some to spare, and thus were revived and full of fight. They carried breakfast food to those in the canoes, who were too weak to walk, but not to eat.
On the seventh day they crossed the river and reached Cruces, the head of navigation of the Chagres River, and beheld the city in flames. Here they found some wine, one sack of bread and some dogs and cats, which they ate and drank. Then they were taken sick; and Morgan laid it to the wine, which was a happy thought.
On the eighth day they repulsed an Indian ambuscade near by, and lost ten men. Before they left, they were caught in a rainstorm, which was more serious. As they had no houses for shelter, they put the ammunition in holes and cellars of the destroyed houses to keep it dry while they themselves passed the night taking a shower bath.
On the ninth day they pushed on and reached El Cerro de los Filibusteros, and took their first look at the Pacific Ocean. Here they found droves of horses, mules, oxen, etc., and ate them. Spanish cavalry appeared often, but upon seeing the pirates, crossed themselves and withdrew, not wishing to be fired upon or touched by such a horde of unholy tramps. Where was Don Juan P. de G., P. of P., N. G.? At prayers where good men love to be. He thought he had the faith that confoundeth the enemy, forgetting that there is no faith without deeds. In the meantime Morgan’s men took a good sleep and recuperated.
On the tenth day Morgan abandoned the regular road which the watchers and waiters had prepared to defend with cannon, and made a new road and appeared on a hill that was separated from the city by a plain. Here the Panamanians assembled 400 horse, 2,400 foot soldiers and 2,000 head of cattle, males and females, to resist the buccaneers.
The cavalry ran out at Morgan, floundered about on the boggy plain and retired. The cattle then were shoved at him, but they were no braver than the cavalry and were stampeded back into the Panamanian lines, causing great slaughter. The main body was then flanked by Morgan’s left wing and promptly routed. Time, two hours. Casualties, 600 Panamanians left dead on the field, and many pirates sent to Satan.
Don Juan N. G. then had the town set on fire, and it slowly burned down. Indeed, Don Juan played the Muscovite game from beginning to end. But Morgan was only fifty miles from his base, with which he had already established communication, and was not now in danger of starving or freezing. In fact, it is thought by some authorities that Morgan started the fire. Anyway the fire burned. Morgan looked down from the hill and said, “Let her burn.” Don Juan looked up from the flames and said, “Let us pray.”
Then Morgan rode down and made his promised call. He and his fiendish followers staid in what was left of Panama for four months, plundering the surrounding country and ravishing the women. He held as many prominent persons as he could for ransom, and also tortured many to make them divulge the hiding places of valuables. He took what vessels he found in the port and scoured the South Sea for many miles. He captured a few stray ships, but the galleon upon which the greatest valuables had been placed escaped him. He then returned to Fort San Lorenzo with his booty and gave each of the surviving pirates $400, pretending to divide equally with them. The pirates accused him of keeping the greater part of the treasures and thought themselves poorly paid for the work they had done and the risks they had run. Those who were sent to Satan were the only ones whose rewards were in keeping with the character of their work.
Having failed to get a ransom for the castle of Chagres, he demolished some of its walls and set sail secretly for Jamaica, leaving the majority of his men behind, and almost as poor as before the expedition. God did not help Don Juan, but he hit the pirates hard. Few men would be willing to do so much dangerous work for so little pay. There certainly were and are many honest occupations available, even for the most ignorant men, that pay better in the end than trying to obtain by sword cuts or short cuts, what belongs to others. But everything has to be tried and exploited in this immature world, and Henry Morgan did pioneer work. As a reward for this, Henry was made a Sir and appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, and the island has ever since been a victim of the four elements. These were golden days for buccaneers, for they were not only tolerated at Jamaica but were licensed by Great Britain to rob and kill Spanish men and women, and to spend the money and sell the jewels at British ports.
A paragraph from John Evelyn’s diary tells the story:
“1698, 6 Aug.—I dined with Mr. Pepys, where was Capt. Dampier, who had been a famous Buccaneer, had brought hither the painted Prince Job, and printed a relation of his very strange adventure, and his observations. He was now going abroad again by the King’s encouragement, who furnished a ship of 290 tons. He seemed a more modest man than one would imagine by the relation of the crew he has assorted with.”
Surely the tourist, the poet, the artist, the antiquarian, and lover of the romantic past, need not go to Europe or Asia to find ruin and romance, dirt and dreaminess, the splendor of nature and the destructiveness of man, to find history, hallucination, inspiration and perspiration.
Let him visit the solitary ruined tower at the site of the old city of Panama and tumble into old vaults and ditches; let him study the church ruins in the present city, and buy a few; let him live in the dingy old Spanish houses and go about among the parti-colored inhabitants, instead of traveling in Europe among his own countrymen. Let him study the history, legends, superstitions, customs and language of the people and be satisfied. If not let him go to Yucatan and study the architecture and religion of the Aztecs, which are not modeled after guide books, and let him wander and dream and write and paint and see something new under the sun, that really is under the sun. Europe and Asia are an old story.
Panama has changed hands since the buccaneer period when the buccaneers did all of the fighting. Panamanians now have less money, fewer prayers and more fights. They have not a praying Don Juan for president—Don Juans should not pray. Their chief fault is that they believe in frequent changes of administration. But they have the courage of their convictions, and the army has always been ready to act upon them, pro or con.
President Amador is a philosopher and believes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, that the greatest preventive of fighting is to do away with the fighters. Hence the large standing army of the republic has been disbanded and their duties given over to the military policemen. Since then there has been a revolutionary stagnation, a slump in the revolutionary market, for which Uncle Sam is said to be responsible. But for Uncle Sam there would have been something doing in Panama before this.