A BIT OF THE OLD TOWN.
city. But to-day the clubs have taken the places of saloons, as far as the higher officials are concerned, while the spread of the canal offices all along the route has greatly affected the business of the saloons. Still on Saturdays and Sundays many of the gold employees on the Zone (clerks, steam-shovel men, engineers, foremen, supervisors, timekeepers, and others, whose occupation it would be difficult to discover) flock into Panama, to witness the baseball games and meet their friends. At such times the saloons and bars enjoy once more a taste of their almost forgotten popularity. The most important saloon is that attached to the Hotel Central in the Plaza. If you sit in it from early morning till late in the evening, you will be certain to meet with every important person in the city. Some you would see very often, others but seldom. Their merry chatter and hilarity make the place lively, and their almost unquenchable thirst keeps the bar-tender busy. Always parched and thirsty themselves, they are obsessed with the opinion that everybody they meet is suffering from the same complaint. Before dinner-time, about half-past six in the evening, the crowd in the saloon of the “Central” gathers, and each small round table is the centre of a noisy group of companions who order cocktails, “high bulls,” and other cheering concoctions. Meanwhile small boys shout the evening paper, a miserable little sheet that never contains any news sufficiently important to cause comment, for all the information it prints has been discussed hours before. Nevertheless, many copies are sold, for the Panamanian, ever anxious to keep abreast with the manners and customs of civilised communities, generally buys a copy. Old women with lottery tickets do quite a large business at this hour, for after the twentieth cocktail even the most accomplished drinker becomes a little regardless and throws his money about recklessly. But for all that, great care is taken in choosing with a becoming semblance of sober judgment a number that the purchaser has some very particular fancy for. Once a ticket has been sold, the demands of others, always ready to emulate the plunging of a good sportsman, keep the vendor of chances busy. Two or three of the roysterers will join together and purchase a ticket between them. The division into shares and complex allotments of the ticket invested entail the making of illegible notes and memoranda which serve to give a business-like air to the transactions. More small boys, wearing a grin that makes up for the scantiness of their clothing, dart in and out through the open doors with paper bags containing pea-nuts, and soon dispose of their entire stock. Piles of these nuts lie on each of the little tables, and the cracking and munching sounds as they disappear make up for breaks in the conversation. The stone floor soon assumes the aspect of a newly gravelled pavement, and the parties begin to separate and make their ways to dinner. Thus early in the evening is the “Central” saloon deserted, and should the visitor be desirous of being in the crowd after this hour, he must seek some other resort. At the numerous gatherings and entertainments which take place in Panama a great variety and odd assortment of types from every quarter of the globe are encountered. Quite apart from the casual gatherings of transients at the hotels, there are many opportunities for those who appreciate gaiety to indulge their taste to the full. Scarce a week passes but there are two or three balls, receptions given by members of clubs or private residents, and visitors to the city generally receive invitations.
THE PLAZA, PANAMA.
The weekly reception by the President is usually well attended by the Panamanians and visitors, while many of the Canal Commission officials put in an appearance, and with their white uniforms lighten the scene. The official residence of the President guarded by about twenty lounging, diminutive policemen, is alive with bustling movement, and carriages in all stages of decay line the street outside. After leaving your hat with a very unofficial-looking servant at the entrance, you pass into a large salon, and are introduced to the President, who stands near the door. Many of the leaders of fashion and society are assembled in the room, and you soon discover that a free and easy air entirely devoid of anything like formality pervades the apartment. Puzzle games that long ago were sold by the vendors of cheap novelties on the streets of big cities lie around on tables in heaps to amuse the guests, while at circular tables, placed at one end of the room, elderly, stout persons sit playing at the game of puff-ball. The room, about one hundred feet long by thirty feet wide, is furnished with gilded chairs and lounges and tables, and along the top of the walls, doing duty as a frieze, are a series of poorly painted portraits.
These pictures are painted on the surface of the wall, and round each is an oval frame or wreath, also painted in yellow colours, to represent gilding.
Past Governors and patriots and statesmen all glare down on their successors in the game of politics. For whom they all were intended, and what names the originals bore, it is doubtful if any of the present generation could tell, for all the South American republics have scores of heroes whose reputations and fame have long been forgotten, and there are few who have sufficient interest in the past to keep green the records of the illustrious dead. The living specimens of “patriots,” who with perfervid zeal talk of their country’s rights and wrongs, its present and its future, are certainly a better-looking lot than their predecessors, but it may be that the artists who limned the features of the latter have not done the originals justice.
The ladies of Colombia are proverbial for their good looks, and those of Panama are no exception. The popular conception of the jealousy of Spanish husbands, who are commonly supposed to be rather ready with the knife and stiletto, is quite erroneous, at least as far as Panama and Colombia are concerned.
The ladies of Colombia affect the fashions of Europe and Paris, and in Panama one sees but few of the older picturesque fashions that still obtain in many of the cities and towns of the interior. Some of the poorer classes still wear their thick, black hair in two long plaits hanging over their shoulders, and a few of the costumes are rather original, consisting of black silk skirts cut sufficiently close to show the form, a large kerchief thrown over the head, and falling in long folds down to the waist. The mantilla is worn by some, but newer fashions are fast ousting every kind of national dress. In Cartagena and Bogota are seen more of the older, picturesque forms, but it is only amongst the lower orders