"We were accompanied on our excursion by a gentleman who lives in Panama, but had not been in the old city for two or three years. He said the place had two or three inhabitants, or, rather, there were that number of negroes who lived there, and acted as guides to visitors. With some difficulty he found the hut of one of them, and luckily for us its owner was at home. His only clothing was a strip of cloth around the waist and a pair of sandals on his feet, and the entire furniture of the place would have been dear at ten dollars. He had a few baskets and earthen jars, an old hammock, a rough bench to sleep on, an iron pot for cooking purposes, and a pair of rollers for crushing sugar-cane. He had a small patch of sugar-cane, another of bananas; the bay supplied him with fish, the beach afforded plenty of oysters, shrimps, and mussels, and the money obtained from visitors was enough for buying his tobacco and a few other trifles which made up the sum of his necessities, and were procured in a semi-annual trip to Panama. He declared that he was perfectly satisfied with his way of life, and as he had been there for twenty years and more, I have no doubt he spoke the truth.
"A prince in his palace could not have been more polite than was this dark-skinned hermit. He had no chairs to offer, but asked us to sit down on his bench; we accepted the invitation, and after handing us a gourd of water, which we found very refreshing, he put on his hat in order to be more fully dressed. Then, with true Spanish politeness, he told us that the house and all it contained were ours, but we couldn't see that we should have been much richer if we had taken him and his belongings at his word. We rested perhaps a quarter of an hour, talking with him about his solitary life, and then asked him to guide us through the old city.
"'Sí, Señores,' he replied, touching his hat in a most dignified manner, 'but would we drink some chichi before starting.'
MAKING CHICHI.
"Chichi is the juice of the sugar-cane, and is a favorite beverage in this region; of course we consented, and he immediately picked up his machete (hatchet) and went out. In a little while he returned with an armful of sugar-cane, which he proceeded to pass through the rollers, after first bruising the canes with a mallet to make the work of crushing easier. Our Panama friend took one end of the machine, and got himself into quite a perspiration before the job was finished; I fancy he did not relish it, but our entertainer did not seem to mind it in the least. The machine was a rude construction, and not to be compared with the polished rollers that are to be found in sugar-manufactories on a large scale, but it was entirely adequate to the wants of our sable host.
BRIDGE AT OLD PANAMA.