[125] Panama is an Indian word, signifying a place abounding with fish.
[126] 8° 59´ N.
[127] About a mile outside the present city of Panama there is a hill, now laid out as a garden with a summer house on the top. This is the “Cerro de Buccaneros,” whence Morgan, with his ruffians, got the first view of the rich city of old Panama; and a most magnificent view it is. Undulating hills clad in bright foliage, green savannahs, the blue bay with its islands, and the modern city of Panama on a long promontory almost surrounded by the sea. Far away to the left, rising out of a dense forest, is the solitary tower which alone remains of the once flourishing old Panama, the town founded by Pedrarias, and described above by our author. So complete is the desolation of this once splendid city, the centre of trade between Peru and Spain, that it is difficult to reach the site. The way leads through a trackless forest of tall trees and tangled undergrowth, and over a swampy creek of deep black mud, which opens on the sea-shore, the port described by Cieza de Leon. The tall tower of San Geronimo covered with creepers, with decayed and falling walls rising up around it, out of the dense jungle, amidst thick brushwood and tall forest trees, alone marks the site of the old city. When we reached the beach it was low water, and the wide sands were covered with pelicans, cranes, sandpipers, and other water fowl, which made the place look still more melancholy and deserted. Old Panama was one of the richest cities in Spanish America. It had eight monasteries, two splendid churches and a cathedral, a fine hospital, two hundred richly furnished houses, near five thousand houses of a humble kind, a Genoese chamber of commerce, two hundred warehouses, and delicious gardens and country houses in the environs. All is now covered by a dense and impervious forest.
The buccaneers marched to the attack of this doomed city under the command of the notorious Morgan, and, after three weeks of rapine and murder, left it on February 24th, 1671, with one hundred and seventy-five laden mules and over six hundred prisoners. The houses were built of cedar, so that when Morgan set fire to them, the destruction was complete.
After this fearful calamity the governor of Panama, Don Juan Perez de Guzman, was recalled and sent prisoner to Lima by order of the Viceroy of Peru, and in 1673 Don Alonzo Mercado de Villacorta was ordered to found a new town on the present site, some miles from the ruins of old Panama.
A paved road led from old Panama to Porto Bello, on the opposite side of the isthmus.
[128] The prevailing winds along the shores of Peru blow from S.S.E. to S.W., seldom stronger than a fresh breeze.
[129] 8° 20´ to 8° 40´ N.
[130] 8° 5´ N.
[131] 7° 24´ N.