As you approach the town, the open spaces become more frequent, until at length you gain a rising ground, about three miles from Panama, where the view is enchanting. Below lies the city, and the broad Pacific, dotted with ships, lies broad and glassy beyond.
Basil Hall, an accurate but less poetical observer, sketches the bay of Panama, its beach fringed with plantations shaded by groves of oranges, figs, and limes, the tamarinds surmounting all but the feathery tops of the cocoa-nut trees; the ground hidden with foliage, among which peep cane-built huts and canoes pulling to shore. Tavoga he describes as a tangle of trees and flowers. "The houses of the city, very curious and magnificent," says Esquemeling, "and richly adorned with paintings and hangings, of which a part only had been removed." The buildings were all stately, and the streets broad and well arranged. There were within the walls eight monasteries, a cathedral, and an hospital, attended by the religious. The churches and monasteries were richly adorned with paintings, and in the subsequent fire may have perished some of the masterpieces of Titian, Murillo, or Velasquez. The gold plate and fittings of these buildings the priests had concealed. The number of rich houses was computed at 2000, and the smaller shops, &c., at 5000 additional. The grandest buildings in the town were the Genoese warehouses connected with the slave trade; there were also long rows of stables, where the horses and mules were kept that were used to convey the royal plate from the South to the North Pacific Ocean. Before the city, like offerings spread before a throne, lay rich plantations and pleasant gardens.
Panama was the city to which all the treasures of Peru were annually brought. The plate fleet, laden with bars of gold and silver, arrived here at certain periods brimming with the crown wealth, as well as that of private merchants. It returned laden with the merchandise of Panama and the Spanish main, to be sold in Peru and Chili, and still oftener with droves of negro slaves that the Genoese imported from the coast of Guinea to toil and die in the Peruvian mines. So wealthy was this golden city that more than 2,000 mules were employed in the transport of the gold and silver from thence to Porto Bello, where the galleons were loaded. The merchants of Panama were proverbially the richest in the whole Spanish West Indies. The Governor of Panama was the suzerain of Porto Bello, of Nata, Cruz, Veragua, &c., and the Bishop of Panama was primate of the Terra Firma, and suffragan to the Archbishop of Peru. The district of Panama was the most fertile and healthy of all the Spanish colonies, rich in mines, and so well wooded that its ship-timber peopled with vessels both the northern and the southern seas; its land yielded full crops, and its broad savannahs pastured innumerable herds of wild cattle.
The Buccaneers found the booty in the half-devastated town ample beyond their expectations, in spite of all that had been destroyed, buried, or removed. The stores were still full of wealth, which not even a month of alarm had given the merchants time to remove to their overcharged vessels. Some rooms were choked with corn, and others piled high with iron, tools, plough-shares, &c., for Peru. In many was found "metal more attractive," in the shape of wine, olive oil, and spices, while silks, cloths, and linen lay around in costly heaps.
Morgan, still afraid of surprise, resorted to a reckless scheme to avert the danger. The very night he entered Panama he set fire to a few of the chief buildings, and before morning the greater part of the city was in a flame, although the first blaze had been detected in the suburbs. No one knew his motive, and few that the enemy had not done it. He carefully spread a report, both among the prisoners and his own people, that the Spaniards themselves were the authors of the fire. The citizens and even the English strove to extinguish the flames, by blowing up some houses with gunpowder and pulling down others, but being of wood, the fire spread rapidly from roof to roof. In less than half an hour a whole street was consumed. The Genoese warehouses and many of the slaves were burnt, and only one church was left standing; 200 store buildings were destroyed. Œxmelin seems to lament chiefly the slaves and merchandise, and scarcely even affects a regret for the stately city. The ruins continued to smoke and smoulder for a month, and at daybreak of the morning after their arrival, little of the great city they had lately seen glorious in the sunset remained but the president's house, where Morgan and his staff lodged, a small clump of muleteers' cottages, and two convents, that of St. Joseph and that of the Brothers of the Redemption. Still fearful of surprise, the adventurers encamped outside the walls in the fields, from a wish to avoid the confusion, and in order to keep together in case of an attack by a superior force. The wounded were put into the only church that had escaped the fire.
The next day Morgan despatched 160 men to Chagres to announce his victory, and to see that his garrison wanted for nothing. They met whole troops of Spaniards running to and fro in the savannah, but, in spite of their expectations, they never rallied. In the afternoon the Buccaneers re-entered the city, and selected houses of the few left to barrack in. They then dragged all the available cannon they could find and placed them round the church of the Fathers of the Trinity, which they entrenched. In this they placed in separate places the wounded and the prisoners. The evening they spent in searching the ruins for gold, melted or hidden, and found much spoil, especially in wells and cisterns.
A few hours after, Morgan's vessels returned with three prizes, laden with plate and other booty, taken in the South Sea. The day they sailed, arriving at one of the small islands of refuge near Panama, they took a sloop with its crew of seven men, belonging to a royal Spanish vessel of 400 tons, laden with church plate and jewels, removed by the richest merchants in Panama; there were also on board all the religious women of the nunnery, with the valuable ornaments of their church, and she was so deeply laden as not to require ballast. It carried only seven guns and a dozen muskets, had no more sails than the "uppermost of the mizen," was short of ammunition and food, and even of water. The Buccaneers received this intelligence from some Indians who had spoken to the seamen of the galleon when they came ashore in a cock-boat for water. Had they given chase they might have easily captured it, but Captain Clark let the golden opportunity slip through his hands. Thinking himself sure of his prize as he had got her sloop, his men spent the night in drinking the rich wines they found in the sloop, and reposing in the arms of their Spanish mistresses, the more beautiful for their tears and despair. During these debaucheries the galleon slipped by and was no more seen, and so they lost a prize of greater value than all the treasure found in Panama. In the morning, weary of the revel, they crowded all sail and despatched a well-armed boat to pursue the cripple, ascertaining that the Spanish ship was in bad sailing order and incapable of making any resistance. In the islands of Tavoga and Tavogilla they captured several boats laden with merchandise. Informed by a prisoner of the probable moorings of the galleon, Morgan, enraged at her escape, sent every boat in Panama in pursuit of her, bidding them seek till they found her. They were eight days cruising from port to creek. Returning to the isles, they found here a large ship newly come from Payta, laden with cloth, soap, sugar, biscuit, and 20,000 pieces of eight; another small boat near was also taken and laden with the divided merchandise. With these glimpses of wealth the boats returned to Panama somewhat consoled for the loss of their larger prize. The Buccaneers' vessels now began to excite the astonishment of the Spaniards, they being the first Englishmen, since Drake, who had appeared as enemies on those seas.
During this expedition Morgan had employed the rest of his men in scouring the country in daily companies of 200, one party relieving another, and perpetually bringing in flocks of pale and bleeding prisoners, or mules laden with treasure. Some tortured the captives, others explored the mines, and the rest burnt glittering heaps of gold and silver stuffs, merely to obtain the metal, expecting to have to fight their way back to their ships at Chagres, and not wishing to be encumbered with unwieldy bundles on that toilsome and dangerous march. Morgan, complaining much of the fruitless labours of his foragers, at last placed himself at the head of 350 men, and sallied into the country to torture every wealthy Spaniard he could meet.
The following anecdote presents us with such a complete picture of the demoralisation of a panic, that it reminds us of Thucydides' description of Athens during the plague, or Boccaccio's of Florence during the raging of the pest. On one occasion Morgan's men met with a poor Spaniard, who, during the general confusion, had strolled into a rich man's house and dressed himself in the costume of a merchant of rank. He had just stripped off his rags, and, first luxuriating in a change of costly Dutch linen, had slipped on a pair of breeches of fine red taffety, and picking up the silver key of some coffer, had tied it to one of his points. Esquemeling represents the man as a poor retainer of the house. He was still wondering childishly at his unwonted finery, when the Buccaneers broke into the house and seized him as a prize. Finding him richly dressed and in a fine house, they believed him at once to be the master. His story they treated as a subtle invention. In vain he pointed to the black rags he had thrown off—in vain he protested, by all the saints, that he lived on charity, and had wandered in there and put on the clothes by the merest chance, and without a motive but of venial theft. Spying the little key at his girdle they became sure that he lied, and they demanded where he had hid his cabinet. They had at first laughed at his ingenious story—they now grew angry at his denials of wealth. They stretched him on the rack and disjointed his arms, they twisted a cord round his wrinkled forehead "till his eyes appeared as big as eggs, and were ready to fall out," and as he still refused to answer, they hung him up and loaded him with stripes. They then cut off his nose and ears, singing his face with burning straw till he could not even groan or scream, and at last, despairing of obtaining a confession, gave him over to their attendant band of negroes to put him to death with their lances. "The common sport and recreation of the pirates," says Esquemeling, "being such cruelties."
They spared no sex, age, or condition; priest or nun, peasant or noble, old man, maiden, and child were all stretched on the same bed of torture. They granted no quarter to any who could not pay a ransom, or who would not pay it speedily. The most beautiful of the prisoners became their mistresses, and the virtuous were treated with rigour and cruelty. Captain Morgan himself seduced the fairest by alternate presents and threats. There were women found base enough to forsake their religion and their homes to become the harlots of a pirate and a murderer. But to his iron heart love found a way, and enervated the mind of the man whom nothing before could soften.