Prowling about Panama

by George A. Miller

ROMANTIC OLD CONVENTS SURVIVE

One of the favorite amusements of tourists and other people used to be that of digging for treasure at Old Panama. No one ever found anything of value, but it made a fine story to tell upon return to the States. "When I was digging for treasure in Old Panama"—just say it and see what a flavor it has. It is most probable that if the ruins were located in a cooler climate, there would have been a great deal more digging. Under a tropic sun, however, it takes considerable bait to induce anyone to indulge in such vigorous exercise.

The treasure idea is easy to locate. Peruvian gold was all brought up to Panama and stored in warehouses until it could be packed across to Porto Bello. There were endless fighting and plots and schemes and robberies and murders connected with the gold trade. Many a man lost his gold, and many a man his life. And, in consequence, some of the gold was also lost in the mêlée. What more natural, then, than to look about for this lost treasure in the place where most of it was stored?

Now, there may be millions of dollars' worth of old gold somewhere about Old Panama. The only difficulty is that no one ever yet has been able to find any of it. The probability is that no gold was ever left there long enough to be very much lost, and the men who did the fighting also took care of the gold. But that does not prevent any one from "digging for treasure in Old Panama" if he wants to do so.

Nevertheless, there is treasure in Old Panama, and it is to be had for the digging. But the digging will be, not amid the rocks, but into the history of the place. And the digger will find rare nuggets for his pains. Balboa, Pizarro, Pedrarias laid out this town, and set the pace for the wild and unprincipled years that followed. And Henry Morgan, adventurer, pirate, and general rascal, ended the story as it was begun—in crime and blood.

Accounts of the construction and character of the old city represent it to have been builded with much magnificence. All the woods used in building were of the fine native mahoganies, and there were hangings, tapestries, and paintings in the sumptuous houses of the men who became enormously rich from the traffic of the times. Returning ships from Europe brought luxuries as well as necessities, and the gold trade people maintained regular fleets of ships and put Panama in close touch with the life of the age. There are described two large churches, a cathedral, a "hospital," over two thousand large houses, and several very large establishments for the care of the great number of pack animals used on the trail. Large quantities of gold, silver, pearls, and gems of various sorts were in evidence. In the day of its glory Panama was a veritable Arabian Nights city, with some two hundred warehouses for the storing of stolen treasure.

The story of the destruction of the old city is one of shocking cruelty and lust, and merely furnishes the last chapter of the same tale of crime that marks the history of the Isthmus from the finding of the Peruvian gold to the days when the murderous pillages of rival pirates finally destroyed the commerce of the Isthmus and left Panama little more than a memory of former glories. The burning of Old Panama marks the turning point in Isthmian history and closes forever the days of conquest. About this time the vast supply of Peruvian gold became exhausted, and between the failure of loot and the destruction of trade by brigandage the Isthmus fell into neglect and was nearly lost sight of by the world for two hundred years.

Anyone who knows the story of the place will find the ruins fascinating because they show a construction of the days when men built strong walls because nothing else would stand the strain of the lives they lived. Some of the walls stand as firm and strong to-day as they did three and a half centuries ago, and unless removed by the hand of man they will stand here a thousand years hence. And when a wall stands for centuries in this tropic climate of disintegration it is a wall to remember.