CHAPTER V
THE SACK OF OLD PANAMA
The week after the fall of San Lorenzo, Morgan with his full force appeared at the mouth of the Chagres River. Before leaving St. Catherine he had dismantled the forts and burned all the houses for no particular reason except the seemingly instinctive desire of a buccaneer to destroy all that he could not steal. At once he began his preparations for the ascent of the Chagres to its head of navigation, where, disembarking, he would take the trail for Old Panama. Cruces, which was the point of debarkation, had grown to a considerable town at this time, being the point of transshipment of goods destined for Nombre de Dios, or Porto Bello, from the mules that had brought them thus far, to the boats that would float them down to tide water. The town, an inconsiderable hamlet of thatched huts, remained in 1913, but the rise of Gatun Lake was expected to practically blot it out of existence.
Old Panama, for which Morgan was preparing the grim experience of a battle and a sack, had been founded in 1519 by that Pedrarias of whom we have told as the executioner of Balboa. It had grown rapidly, built up by the trade resulting from the invasion of Peru. At the time of Morgan’s raid Esquemeling writes of the city:
NEAR A CONVENT AT OLD PANAMA
“There belonged to this city (which is also the head of a bishopric) eight monasteries, whereof seven were for men and one for women; two stately churches and one hospital. The churches and monasteries were all richly adorned with altar-pieces and paintings, huge quantity of gold and silver, with other precious things.... Besides which ornaments, here were to be seen two thousand houses of magnificent and prodigious building, being all of the greatest part inhabited by merchants of that country, who are vastly rich. For the rest of the inhabitants of lesser quality and tradesmen, this city contained five thousand houses more. Here were also great numbers of stables, which served for the horses and mules, that carry all the plate, belonging as well unto the King of Spain as to private men, towards the coast of the North Sea. The neighboring fields belonging to this city are all cultivated and fertile plantations, and pleasant gardens, which afford delicious prospects unto the inhabitants the whole year long.”
Correal fixes the number of private houses as between seven and eight thousand. The pious Thomas Gage whom we have seen haggling for rooms at Porto Bello visited Panama about 1538 and even then credits it with five thousand inhabitants, and at least eight cloisters of nuns and friars. Unfortunately the good evangelist found that “the Spaniards are in this city much given to sinne, looseness and venery,” for which reason, or perhaps because he “feared much the heats,” he made haste to leave the town and left us none of those graphic descriptions of which his pen was capable.
CASA REALE OR KING’S HOUSE
Its heavy walls show that it was planned for defense but the Spaniards abandoned it
Photo by Burtis & Elliott
THE RUINED TOWER OF SAN AUGUSTINE
The country round about Panama was then, and still is, arable and well-fitted for grazing. The rural population was but small, more meager indeed than one would think would have been necessary for raising vegetables for so considerable a town. In the back country were great numbers of Cimmaroons, or escaped slaves who are described as living in communities, ruled over by a black king. They went naked and were armed with bows and arrows, spears, darts and machetes. They lived on plunder and as when captured were they killed, or, at the best, enslaved anew, they fought with great desperation. Merchandise trains were their chief victims, though they often raided cattle ranches, or cut off individuals in the outskirts of the city. The English supplied them with weapons and could always be sure of their aid against the Spaniards, who had been their masters and whom they hated.
The harbor was wretched, useful only for small vessels which at high tide could come straight to the seawall, being left there by the receding tide, high and dry, so that by quick action they could be unloaded before the waters returned. A very considerable part of the food of the town was fish brought thither by Indians from Taboga and nearby islands.
Such was the town which Morgan raided. Because of the colossal disaster which befell it, a disaster without parallel since the days when the Goths and Vandals swept down over the pleasant plains of Italy, there has been a tendency to magnify the size, wealth and refinement of Panama at the time of its fall. But studied calmly, with no desire to exaggerate the qualities which made it so rich a prize, Panama may fairly be described as a city of about 30,000 people, with massive churches, convents and official buildings of masonry, with many stately houses of the type esteemed luxurious in the tropics, and peopled largely by pure-blooded Spaniards of the better type. It was too early a date for the amalgamation of races now so much in evidence on the Isthmus to have proceeded far, and the ancient records show that the Spaniards of substance in the town had mainly come thither from Seville.
Morgan started up the river from San Lorenzo, where he left 500 men to serve as a garrison, on the 18th of January, 1761. His force comprised 1200 men in five boats with artillery and thirty-two canoes. The raiders planned to live on the country and hence took small store of provisions—an error which nearly wrecked the expedition. The first day they covered about eighteen miles. This was by nature made the easiest part of their journey, for this stretch of the Chagres is deep, with but a slow current and much of the way they may have been aided by the incoming tide. If the chronicler who fixed their distance covered at eighteen miles was correct, they must have pitched their camp the first night not very far from where Gatun Dam now rears its mighty bulk across the valley and makes of the Chagres a broad lake. Their troubles however came with their first nightfall. Leaving their boats and scattering about the surrounding country they found that the Spaniards had raked it clean of provisions of every sort. The Indian villages were either smoking ruins or clusters of empty huts, the cattle ranches were bare of cattle, and even the banana and yam patches were stripped. By noon on the second day, according to Esquemeling, “they were compelled to leave their boats and canoes by reason the river was very dry for want of rain, and the many trees that were fallen into it.” Henceforth at that point the Chagres River transformed into a lake will be in the neighborhood of forty feet deep the year round. Apparently, however, the abandonment of the boats was only partial, the main body of troops marching through the woods while others waded, pushing the boats over the shallows as is done today. The advance was continued in this fashion, partly by water and partly through the jungle, all with the greatest difficulty, at a snail’s pace and on stomachs daily growing emptier. Twice they came upon signs that the Spaniards had prepared an ambuscade for them, but becoming faint-hearted had fled. Thereat the buccaneers grumbled mightily. They were better at fighting than at chopping paths through the jungle, and were so hungry that if they had slain a few Spaniards they would quite probably have cooked and eaten them. For six days they struggled with the jungle without finding any food whatsoever, then they discovered a granary stored with maize which they ate exultingly. Leather scraps became a much prized article of food, just as in a very different climate Greely’s men in the Arctic circle kept alive on shreds cut from their sealskin boots. Of leather as an article of diet Esquemeling writes:
WAYSIDE SHRINE ON THE SAVANNA ROAD
“Here again he was happy, that had reserved since noon any small piece of leather whereof to make his supper, drinking after it a good draught of water for his greatest comfort. Some persons, who never were out of their mothers’ kitchens, may ask how these pirates could eat, swallow and digest those pieces of leather, so hard and dry. To whom I only answer: That could they once experiment what hunger, or rather famine, is, they would certainly find the manner, by their own necessity, as the pirates did. For these first took the leather and sliced it in pieces. Then did they beat it between two stones, and rub it, often dipping it in the water of the river to render it by these means supple and tender. Lastly they scraped off the hair, and roasted or broiled it upon the fire. And, being thus cooked, they cut it into small morsels, and eat it, helping it down with frequent gulps of water, which by good fortune they had near at hand.”
Once only did they meet with any resistance; that was near Cruces where several hundred Indians ambushed them in the jungle, and while avoiding any direct combat, killed several with arrows. As the Indians fled they cried out in Spanish, “Ho, ye dogs! Go to the savanna; to the savanna,” from which, as from like warnings uttered by stragglers, the invaders concluded that battle was to be given them on the broad plain before the city.
It had taken six days for the expedition to reach Cruces—a trip which could readily be made today by train to Gamboa and thence by cayuca in five or six hours. Arrived there they prepared for the last stage of the journey, for there they finally left their boats and took up the Royal Road. Cruces is eight miles from Panama, and at the moment of Morgan’s descent upon it, was at the period of its greatest prosperity. Of its rise to greatness and its final disappearance under the rising waters of Gatun Lake I shall have more to say in the chapter concerning the Chagres River. The English found the frame houses already ablaze, and the larders swept clean, the Spaniards having followed their invariable custom of leaving no food for the invaders. Some wretched dogs and cats which hung about the deserted dwellings were killed and eaten, and in the storehouses a number of jars of wine were found, upon drinking which the buccaneers became deathly sick. They claimed it was poisoned, but more probably their stomachs, which had been struggling to digest leather scraps, were in no condition for the strong wines of the tropics.
From this point onward the invaders saw many of their enemies, but the Indians only offered active resistance, firing upon the advancing column from ambuscades, and at one or two made a determined stand. As the invaders were strung out in single file along a narrow road (Esquemeling complains that only ten or twelve men could walk in a file) it would have been easy to so impede their progress, and harass them with attacks from the bush, as to defeat their purpose wholly. For it is to be remembered that the English were almost starved, footsore and weary, dragging cannon along the rocky roads and bearing heavy equipment under the scorching sun. But the Spaniards contented themselves with shouting defiance and daring the invaders to meet them “a la savanna.” At the first danger of a fight they ran away.
Gaining on the ninth day of their march the top of a hill, still known as “El Cerro de los Buccaneeros” (The Hill of the Buccaneers), the pirates had the joy of seeing for the first time the Pacific, and thus knowing that Panama must be at hand. Upon the plain below they came upon a great body of cattle. Some historians say that the Spaniards had gathered a great herd of savage bulls to be driven upon the English lines in expectation of putting them to rout. The tradition seems doubtful, and to any one who has seen the mild and docile bulls of the Panama savannas it is merely ridiculous. However the cattle came there it was an ill chance for the Spaniards, for they furnished the hearty food necessary to put fight again into the famished bodies of the buccaneers. Esquemeling’s description of the banquet on the plains is hardly appetizing:
ARCHED BRIDGE AT OLD PANAMA, ALMOST 400 YEARS OLD
There was no Horatius to hold this strait path against the invaders
“Here while some were employed in killing and flaying cows, horses, bulls and chiefly asses, of which there was greatest number, others busied themselves in kindling of fires and getting wood wherewith to roast them. Thus cutting the flesh of these animals into pieces, or gobbets, they threw them into the fire, and half carbonadoed or roasted, they devoured them with incredible haste and appetite. For such was their hunger that they more resembled cannibals than Europeans at this banquet, the blood many times running down from their beards to the middle of their bodies.”
Gorged to their gullets, the cutthroats lay down to rest. Morgan had a sharp watch kept, and sounded at least one false alarm that the men might not sleep too securely. But the Spaniards on the eve of their crushing disaster left their foes to rest in peace except for a noisy cannonade which did no damage, and shouts of “Corros! Nos Veremos”—“Dogs! We will see you again,” which they certainly did, finding the meeting most unpleasant.
On the morrow, the tenth day after leaving San Lorenzo, and either the 18th or 27th of January, 1671, for contemporary writers differ about the date, the attack on the city began. The buccaneers disappointed the Spanish at the very outset by not taking the road which lay plain and open to them and which was well commanded by the Spanish batteries and ambuscades, but came upon them through the woods. This violation of the rules of the game embarrassed the Spaniards from the very first.
Photo by Prof. Otto Lutz
FOLIAGE ON THE CANAL ZONE
But even so, they had every advantage on their side—except courage. They largely outnumbered the assailants, though the estimate of the hostile generals differ greatly, as they always have in history. We must reasonably suppose that in a battle on the issue of which directly depended their lives, the lives and honor of their womenfolk, their homes, their fortunes, their liberty and the continued existence of their city the people of Panama would have turned out to a man. Yet the President of Panama reported to the Spanish court that he had but 1200 men, mostly negroes, mulattoes and Indians, armed with fowling pieces and his only artillery three wooden cannon bound with rawhide. Dr. C. L. G. Anderson, to whose painstaking study of the old Spanish chroniclers all present-day students of Panama history must be largely indebted, says, and reasonably, “The Spanish army was made up not merely of merchants, planters and servants, but contained besides many regular troops; veterans of the wars in Flanders, Sicily and other countries of Europe.” Whatever the precise figures may have been there is no question that the assailants were largely outnumbered by the defenders who, fighting for wives, and children, homes and firesides, might have been expected to show desperate valor. Instead of which the buccaneers put the Spaniards to rout in two hours’ fighting on the plain to which the pirates had been so scornfully invited.
THE CHAGRES ABOVE SAN LORENZO
The Spanish plan of battle savored largely of the theatrical. As the circus opens its performance with a grand entry of mounted performers, so the Spaniards ushered in the fight with a grand charge of cavalry. Admirable cavalrymen, they are said to have been, well mounted on trained cattle ponies and in all about 400 strong. Unhappily there appeared to have been no preliminary study of the English position, and a morass impenetrable by horsemen guarded its flanks. Only in front could the English line be reached and there the trained marksmen of the buccaneers, or cattle hunters, dropping on one knee, picked off the Spanish horsemen before they could close. The cavalry hardly reached the buccaneers’ first line though they charged twice with the utmost gallantry. An infantry charge that followed was beaten back with like slaughter. Seeing this the Spaniards are said to have resorted to a device as ridiculous in its outcome as it was in its conception. This was the driving against the buccaneers’ lines of a herd of a thousand bulls driven by fifty vaqueros. With great shouting and cracking of whips the herd was urged against the invaders. But the Central American bull as a ferocious beast is a disappointment—which perhaps explains the placidity with which Panama agreed to the request of the United States that it abolish bull fighting. If not vicious, however, they can be obstinate, and about as many bulls charged into the already shattered Spanish lines as upon the buccaneers. Morgan showed quick wit by ordering his men to let the bulls pass, but kill the vaqueros, and so, with the exception of a few bovines who lingered to rend the British flags, being enraged by their scarlet hue, the greater part of the herd trotted off to a quieter part of the savanna where they might placidly graze while the foolish men who had sought to drag them into the quarrel went on killing each other. This virtually ended the Spanish defense. After another charge the defenders of the city gave up any effort at organized opposition to the invaders and fled into the city, or to the shelter of the neighboring jungle. The English, exhausted with their long march and the shock of the battle, did not immediately follow up their advantage but rested for some hours. There is much conflict of authority on the question of loss in the battle. Morgan claimed to have lost only five men killed and ten wounded, and fixed the Spanish loss at about 400. Esquemeling says there were 600 Spaniards dead upon the field beside the wounded and prisoners. Whatever the comparative losses the Spanish defeat was decisive, nor did the survivors regain sufficient morale to offer any effective opposition to the buccaneers as they moved upon the city.
IN THE CRYPT OF OLD SAN AUGUSTINE
A WOMAN OF OLD PANAMA
One would think that the final defense would have been dogged and desperate in the extreme. The Spaniards knew what to expect in the way of murder, rapine, plunder and enslavement. They had the story of Porto Bello fresh in their memories, and, for that matter, they had enjoyed such fruits of victory themselves too often to hug the delusion that these victors would forego them. Nor even after the decisive thrashing they had sustained on the plain need they have despaired. On three sides Panama was defended by the sea and its inlets, and on the fourth could only be approached along a single road and over an arched bridge, the sturdy masonry of which still stands, and forms a favorite background for photographic groups of tourists. Though not walled, as was its successor, Old Panama had a great plenty of heavy masonry buildings, the ruins of which show them to have been constructed with a view to defense. The churches, the eight convents, the official buildings and many of the private residences were built of stone with heavy barred windows and, if stoutly defended in conjunction with barricades in the streets, might well have balked the invaders of their prey. But the Spanish spirit seemed crushed by the defeat of their choice cavalry on the savanna, and three hours sufficed for the English to make themselves masters of the whole city. During the fighting flames broke out in several quarters of the town, some think set purposely by the assailants, which was denied by Morgan. However caused, the fires raged for days, were still smoldering when the buccaneers left three weeks later, and consumed nearly all except the masonry edifices in the city.
Imagination balks at the effort to conceive the wretched plight of the 30,000 people of this city, subjected for three weeks to the cruelty, cupidity and lust of the “experienced and ancient pyrates” and the cutthroats of all nationalities that made up the command of Morgan. Little more than a thousand of the raiders could have remained alive, but all the fighting men of the city were slain, wounded or cowed into unmanly subjection. After the first riotous orgy of drunkenness and rapine—though indeed Morgan shrewdly strove to keep his men sober by spreading the report that all the wine had been poisoned—the business of looting was taken up seriously. First the churches and government houses had to be ransacked for precious ornaments and treasure, and herein the robbers met with their first serious disappointment, for on the news of their coming much of the plate had been put on ships and sent out to sea. A brig aground in the harbor was seized by Morgan and sent in pursuit, but the delights of the Island of Taboga, then as now a pleasure resort, proved superior even to the avariciousness of the Spaniards, and they lingered there over wine cups until the treasure ships had vanished. Rumors still linger that much of the treasure had been buried at Taboga, and that one richly freighted ship had been sunk some place nearby. But frequent treasure-hunting expeditions have come home empty handed.
WASH DAY AT TABOGA
After raking the government buildings from garret to vaults the pirates turned to the private houses. From ceremonial plate to the seamstress’s thimble; from the glittering necklace to the wedding ring, everything was raked together into the great common store of plunder. What was easily found was not enough. Wells were searched, floors torn up, walls ripped open and, after all other devices had been employed, prisoners were put to the torture to make them reveal the hiding places of their own and others’ valuables. Capt. Morgan led in this activity, as indeed he appears to have been the most villainous of all his crew in the mistreatment of women. After all that could be gathered by these devices had been taken the several thousand prisoners were informed that if they wanted to retain their lives and regain their liberty they must pay ransom, fixed in amount according to the standing in the community and the wealth of the captive. Of course the community was gone and the buccaneers had taken all of the wealth, but the luckless prisoner was expected to pay nevertheless and a surprising number of them did so. With all these expedients for the extraction of wealth from a subjugated town, the buccaneers were fain to be satisfied, and, weak from wounds and revelry, according to Esquemeling:
A STREET IN CRUCES
“On the 24th of February, of the year 1761, Captain Morgan departed from the city of Panama, or rather from the place where the city of Panama did stand. Of the spoils whereof he carried with him one hundred and seventy-five beasts of carriage, laden with silver, gold and other precious things, besides 600 prisoners more or less, between women, children and slaves.”
BREAKING WAVES AT OLD PANAMA
OLD BELL AT REMEDIOS, 1682
So they plodded back to San Lorenzo whence they had started on their piratical expedition. It affords a striking illustration of the strictly business methods of these pirates that before reaching the castle Morgan ordered a halt, and had every man searched for valuables, submitting himself to the inquisition. So thorough was the search that even the guns were shaken, upside down, lest precious stones might be concealed in their barrels. However the buccaneers came to jeer at Morgan’s apparent fairness in being searched with the rest, and putting his personal pilferings into the common lot as a piece of duplicity. For the loot of the Panama expedition has been reckoned at several millions of dollars, and indeed a town of that size, famous for wealth and at a period when the amassing of gold and jewels was a passion, should certainly have produced that much. But when it came to the vital operation of dividing the spoils the ordinary fighting men found that for their four months’ campaign, they received about $100 apiece. “Which small sum,” says the literary apothecary Esquemeling, who was “buncoed” with the rest, “they thought too little reward for so much labor and such huge and manifest dangers they had so often exposed their lives unto. But Captain Morgan was deaf to all these and many other complaints of this kind, having designed in his mind to cheat them of as much as he could.”
Henry Morgan was indeed a practical pirate, who, had he but lived four hundred years later, could have made vastly more money out of a town of 30,000 people by the mild devices of franchises and bonds, than he did out of Panama with murder, the rack, robbery and rapine for his methods. After setting the example of loyally putting his all into the common store, he assumed the duty of dividing that store. This accomplished to his liking, and knowing that idleness breeds discontent, and that discontent is always hurtful to capital, he set his men to work pulling the Castle of San Lorenzo to pieces. While they were thus engaged, one dark night with favoring winds he hove anchor and with four ships, filled with his English favorites, and laden with the lion’s share of the booty, he sailed away from Chagres and from buccaneering forever. He left behind all the French, Dutch and mongrel pirates—those ancient and experienced ones. He left them some of the poorer ships—much as an efficient gang of street railway looters leave some rusty rails and decrepit cars to a town they have looted—but saw to it that none was left that could possibly catch up with his fleet.
So the deserted buccaneers first fought awhile among themselves, then dispersed. Some in an amateurish way sacked the town of Keys in Cuba. Others went to Campeche and Honduras. Esquemeling with a small band went up to Bocadel Toro, now the Panama headquarters of the United Fruit Company, whence he made his way back to Europe. There he wrote his “History of the Buccaneers,” which became one of the world’s “best sellers,” and in which he gave his Captain Morgan “the worst of it”—a species of satisfaction which is often the only recourse of the literary man who gets tangled up with Big Business.
THE BEETLING CLIFFS OF THE UPPER CHAGRES
As for Captain Morgan, he was made much of at Jamaica, where the crown’s share of the proceeds of his piracy was cheerfully accepted by the governor. But in England there was some embarrassment, for there was no war with Spain and the complete destruction of a Spanish city by a force bearing British flags was at least embarrassing. So by way of showing its repentance and good intent the government announced its purpose to suppress buccaneering and all piracy, and to that end created Henry Morgan a baronet and put the commission in his hands—much as we have been accustomed to put politicians on our civil service commissions, and protected manufacturers on our tariff boards. So as Sir Henry Morgan this most wholesale robber and murderer Central America ever knew ended his days in high respectability.
THE ROOTS REACH DOWN SEEKING FOR SOIL
While the ruins of Old Panama compare but unfavorably with those of Porto Bello or San Lorenzo, their proximity to the city of Panama make them a favorite point of interest for tourists. Half a day is ample to give to the drive out and back and to the inspection of the ruins themselves. The extended area over which they are scattered testifies to the size of the obliterated city, while the wide spaces, destitute of any sign of occupation, which intervene between the remaining relics, shows clearly that the greater part of the town must have been built of perishable materials easily swept away at the time of the fire, or slowly disintegrating during the flood of years that have since rolled by. The tower of the Cathedral of St. Augustine alone among the relics still remaining affords any suggestion of grandeur or even of architectural dignity.
To reach the ruins you take a horse, a carriage or an automobile for a ride of about five miles over an excellent road laid and maintained by the Republic of Panama. If you go by horseback the old trail which the pirates used is still traceable and at low tide one can ride along the beach. For the majority the drive along the road, which should be taken in the early morning, is the simpler way, though there was promise in 1913 that within a few months a trolley line would still further simplify the trip.
From Balboa, the Pacific opening of the Panama Canal, and the newest of the world’s great ports, to the ruins of Old Panama, founded in 1609 and obliterated by pirates in 1671, by trolley in two hours! Was ever the past more audaciously linked to the present? Were ever exhibits of the peaceful commerce of today and the bloody raids of ancient times placed in such dramatic juxtaposition?
The road to Old Panama runs through a peaceful grazing country, with a very few plantations. One or two country residences of prosperous Panamanians appear standing well back from the road, but signs of life and of industry are few. The country lies high, is open and free from jungle and in almost any North American state, lying thus close to a town of 40,000 people and adjacent to a district in which the United States is spending some millions of dollars a month, would be platted in additions for miles around, and dotted with the signs of real estate dealers. But the Panamanian mind is not speculative, or at any rate soars little above the weekly lottery ticket. So all Uncle Samuel’s disbursements in the Zone have thus far produced nothing remotely resembling a real estate boom.
However as we turn off from the main road toward the sea and the square broken tower of the old cathedral, or Church of St. Augustine, with the ferns springing from the jagged top, and vines twisting out through the dumbly staring windows, real estate and “booms” seem singularly ignoble topics in the presence of this mute spectator of the agonies of a martyred people. For even the dulling mists of the interposing centuries, even our feeling that the Spaniards suffered only the anguish and the torments which they had themselves meted out to the real owners of the lands they had seized upon, cannot wholly blunt the sense of pity for the women and children, for the husbands and fathers in the city which fell under Morgan’s blight. It would be no easy task to gather in the worst purlieus of any American city today a band so wholly lost to shame, to pity and to God as the ruffians who followed Morgan. What they did to the people on whom their hands reeking with blood were laid must be left to the imagination. The only contemporary record of the sack was written by one of their own number to whom apparently such scenes had become commonplace, for while his gorge rises at the contemplation of his own hard fortune in being robbed and deserted by his chief, he recounts the torture of men and the violation of women in a matter-of-fact way as though all in the day’s work.
BLUFF NEAR TORO POINT
Photographing this scene is now prohibited as a United States fort is to be erected here
Driving on we come to the arched bridge which formed the main entrance to the town in the day of its downfall. Sturdy it is still, though the public road no longer passes over it, defying the assaults of time and the more disintegrating inroads of the tropical plants which insinuate themselves into every crevice, prying the stone apart with tender fingers ever hardening. At once the bridge, none too wide for three to cross abreast, awakens wonder that no Horatius was in all the Spanish armies to keep the bridge as did he of ancient Rome. But after all the rivulet which today makes its sluggish way under the arch is no Tiber to hold the invading army at bay. Perhaps it was bigger in Morgan’s time; today it would be easily forded, almost leapt. At any rate no “Dauntless Three” like those Macaulay sung were there to stay the onrolling tide of foemen.
“WHETHER THE TREE OR THE WALL IS STOUTER IS A PROBLEM”
Hardly have we passed the bridge than a massive vine-embedded ruin on the left of the road stands mute evidence that the Spaniards had forts, if they had but possessed the courage to defend them. This is the Casa Reale, or government house. Its walls of rubble masonry are full two feet thick and have the appearance of having been pierced for musketry. If the buccaneers had any artillery at all, which is doubtful, it was hardly heavy enough to have had any effect against such a wall. Secure within the Casa Reale such a handful of men as held the Alamo against the Mexicans could have resisted Morgan’s men indefinitely. But the spirit was lacking. The stout walls of the Casa Reale stand now as evidences of the character of the defenses the people of Panama had if they but had the pluck to use them.
Continuing toward the sea the visitor next comes upon the ruins of the Cathedral, which are in so shattered a state as to justify the belief that either the invaders or the Spaniards themselves employed gunpowder to wreck so massive an edifice. The flames and the work of the vegetation could hardly have accomplished such complete destruction. The tower alone retains definite form, rising about fifty feet from a dense jungle, and lined within with vines and clinging trees that use the ancient walls as a support and hasten their disintegration in so doing. It is difficult even to trace the lines of the great church, so thoroughly have its walls been demolished. Some of the massive arches still stand all pendulous with vines.
At the water’s edge one still finds steps leading down into the sea, and the remains of the old paved road to which at high tide the boats could come with their cargoes of fish and country produce. If one happens to visit the spot at low tide the view looking seaward is as ugly as could well be imagined. The hard sand beach extends only to high water mark. Beyond that for more than a mile seaward extends a dismal range of black mud of about the consistency of putty. Near the shore it is seen to be full of round holes from which crawl unsightly worms and small crabs. E. C. Stedman puts its unsightly appearance in two lines:
“The tide still ebbs a league from quay,
The buzzards scour the empty bay.”
Along the strand still stand fragments of the old seawall, and at a considerable distance from the Cathedral ruins you come upon another large building of which little more than the lower walls and the subterranean vaults still have form and coherence. The dungeon into which visitors usually make their way is peculiarly dark, damp and dismal, and the general air of ghoulishness is mightily enhanced by the myriads of bats that hang from the ceiling and whirl and whiz away when intruders light matches to study the moldering masonry. A most interesting feature of this crypt is the great roots of the trees and shrubs that sprung from seeds that had fallen into some crevice and found there soil enough to germinate, but not sufficient to support life as the plant grew larger. The roots twist and creep along the walls, reaching out for earth below as unerringly as a giant boa creeps sinuously through the jungle.