A Tour Through South America

by A. S. Forrest

PANAMA FROM ANCON.

But they are very amiable, these Panamanians, ever ready with a smile or salute as you pass them on the street, and with an infinite capacity for making acquaintances, if not for forming friendships.

Late in the afternoon you can see many of them astride prancing steeds, neat, round-bellied little animals, with finely-arched necks, tapering legs clattering along the newly paved streets, their small feet making a strange music like castanets. The saddles used are of the Mexican type, and the large leathern protections which surround the front portion of the stirrups give the riders a somewhat grotesque appearance. About the same hour a continuous procession of carriages drives along the Savannah road, many of them of smart appearance. The black coachmen are all more or less disfigured with tall, shining hats and brass-buttoned coats, but the occupants reclining behind them look beautiful and cool in bright-coloured gowns of amazing cuts. There are only two roads leading out of Panama over which carriages can pass, and consequently the drivers in the neighbourhood of the city are limited to them. One of these—that leading to Balboa—passes the cemeteries of the city. Until very recently a custom obtained in Panama with regard to the burial of the dead which was so repellent it is almost incredible that it could have existed even in a savage country. A concession was granted by the Government to one of its prominent citizens who let out graves on lease and collected rents from the relatives. Should they fall in arrears with the rent, the stony-hearted concessioner had little compunction in ordering his men to remove the remains from the vault in which they rested, and cast them into a waste bit of ground near by. Other cemeteries separated by walls from one another are provided for the interment of different religious bodies. Jews, Mohammedans, Chinese, Roman Catholics, and Protestants are each buried among their co-religionists.

The United States Government, with a sentimental regard for the feelings of its citizens, has, through the Canal Commission, made a rule that, should any citizen of the United States in the employ of the Commission die while on the isthmus, his body shall be embalmed and conveyed at the Government’s expense to any part of the United States that the relatives may desire.

That a reform of the burial system in Panama from a sanitary point of view was necessary and should have impressed itself upon the health authorities is not to be wondered at, but it only could have been brought about in this instance by the United States having full power over the health and sanitation of the country which adjoins their strip of territory. In the country districts there are, of course, no special burial grounds, but the small wooden crosses and cairns that are scattered up and down serve to mark the spots chosen for the interment of the dead.

There is one other cemetery about two miles from Colon called Mount Hope, better known on the isthmus as “Monkey Hill.” The graves marked with wooden crosses contain the remains of representatives of nearly every country in the world. The monuments erected are of the most flimsy materials, so that any indications of the last resting-place of thousands of the makers of the isthmian route will inevitably disappear. So accustomed were the inhabitants of Colon to the procession of the funeral train, that they became quite callous to the fate of the many who had been stricken with the deadly fevers so rampant in the place, and funerals going along the streets are usually followed by mourners engaged in lively conversation and smoking big cigars.

Close contact with these melancholy scenes is unavoidable in the small area in which the inhabitants of the towns of Colon and Panama dwell, and the high death-rate which both have suffered from has made their populations familiar with the trappings of woe.

The road that leads out of the city to the Savannahs, where the summer residences of the better class merchants are situated, is good, as it comes within the canal strip ceded to the States. It is mostly used by the gentry of Panama, and it has lately been extended right out to the ruins of the earliest Latin city in America, “old Panama,” which was destroyed by Morgan in his famous raid. Very little remains of the city which was known to its contemporaries as the “Golden cup of the West.” Its churches with rich altars, and houses filled with priceless tapestries, its richly furnished mansions, its opulent warehouses and wealthy inhabitants, belong to the past. The ruined tower and walls, all overgrown with jungle, that lie near the shore, are all that remain of the cathedral church of St. Anastasius. A couple of narrow masonry bridges near the city indicate where the famous “gold road” led into the town. Over this road, the Cruces trail which led from Panama on the Pacific to Porto Bello on the Atlantic, travelled the famous mule trains with their precious freights of gold and silver from Peru. The road can still be followed, a track of huge, irregular stones marking the course it took, and in some places fair-sized patches of the pavement are still intact. There is little interesting about the ruined city except its associations with the past. It is dead, and nature is striving hard to inter it decently beneath a luxuriant pall of green. One can only visit the spot to stir the imagination and call up its wondrous past. On this spot Pizarro banded his followers together, and from the now overgrown harbour walls his little fleet set sail on one of the most momentous voyages on record. The happenings in “old Panama” make the first page in the voluminous history of the great sub-continent.

Of the saloons and restaurants, with imposing names and uninviting aspect, much might be said. Even the best of them could be improved with little difficulty, but they serve well enough the uncritical tastes of their patrons. The better class cafés or bars in Colon and Panama are generally attached to hotels; and in the time when the French Company’s headquarters were in the Plaza at Panama the cafés and saloons were filled with exuberant life, until the early morning hours, and the larger and more important bars were the most popular places in the