PANAMA
The new city of Panama
PANAMA
A street in modern Panama City
The splendid harbor that once sheltered pennant-gay galleons and proud frigates now gleams beneath the sun with only the humble fishing-boats and dugout canoes to ripple its blue surface. Over the spot where Drake lies fathoms deep beneath the sea, the speeding keels of steamships pass unheedingly. Where the white-faced friars reared the ladders under a storm of bullets, tangled lianas and broad-leafed vines drape the gray walls. Gay flowering shrubs hide the scars of battle and the rusting cannon on the slope up which the pirates stormed, and lizards sun themselves upon the spot where the proud and valiant governor sold his life so dearly.
Peaceful and calm is Porto Bello above its lovely bay. The age-gray fort is set in entrancing scenery, and it is hard indeed to realize that it was once the scene of bloodshed and carnage, that the green hills have echoed to the roar of cannon and the shrieks of the dying, that here, upon these very stones, Don and Briton, soldier and pirate struggled in mortal combat. [[313]]
[1] Of the several forts of the citadel or castle of San Jerome, the largest was also called San Jerome. [↑]