What a story Jack London could have written here! It is too bad that he did not find Old Panama before it was too late. Not only the ruins, but the vista of royal palms along the beach, with the little red-white-and-blue crabs scurrying about at high tide, unite to raise a sense of romance that starts the wheels of fancy revolving in one's brain. All one needs is a "long, low, rakish black craft in the offing,"—there it is now, the very thing, a big chinga, fifty feet long with four sails and twenty-five men on board, luffing and tacking about into the little bay just around the point. Pirates or fishermen—don't inquire too closely; either will do, and both are useful in romance.
In one of the churches are some old graves, where some natives have been buried, partly for convenience and perhaps partly from sentiment. Fine old walls stand earthquake-cracked, but still strong. Of roofs there are, of course, none. And back of the church are still intact the foundations of a house said to have been the house of the governor, and the vaulted arches of the old cellar storehouse are still intact. A native lives in a shanty near by, and he greets the visitor, not with the information that might make him useful and get him a tip, but with the vacant optimism of those who feel that somehow something is coming to them whether they earn it or not.
As for the natives, none of them know anything about the place. The few that live there are of the sort that would camp under the nose of the sphinx and never look up into his face. But the reader of this can well spend a half day amid the most fruitful prowling anywhere in Panama. He may gaze at the splendid tower till the broken walls about it rise again, and the old tiled roof once more covers the worshiping congregations within, and the drone of mass and the fragrance of incense again ascend before the high altar. And down the old street, with its one-story houses, once more wind the pack trains and muleteers and men and women and children. There is excitement everywhere, and commotion and cursing, and everybody runs down to the beach. And if you will turn about and gaze out to sea, you will see there a curious craft with freakish sails, and when it drops anchor and the boat pulls ashore, you will see old Almagro himself step out on the sands sword in hand, and with rough and profane commands, take charge of the unloading of his golden cargo. There will be wild times in Old Panama to-night, for the pack trains have returned from Porto Bello with a cargo of rum, and the sailors from Peru have been long at sea, detained by unfavorable winds, and, like sailors of other times and climes, they are thirsty. Out from the church door comes the tonsured priest; he shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders, and makes his way down to where the great Almagro stands, a commanding figure amid the confusion. For the commander has the gold, and, like all explorers of his time, he will be in need of a proper blessing by the priest; and the padre, being human, can use a little of the gold.
But while you gaze and dream, "dear reader," the vision fades and "the tumult and the shouting dies," and there stand the ruins, and there swings the sweep of the tropic sea, and you are again in the twentieth century, a little richer in mental imagery for your short excursion back into the sixteenth.
Which is to say that dreaming is easy at Old Panama. Try it yourself.