RUINS OF SAN DOMINGO CHURCH
Within the walls, or the portion of the town the walls once surrounded, live the older families of native Panamanians, or those of foreign birth who have lived so long upon the Isthmus as to become identified with its life. The edifices along the streets are more substantial, the shops more dignified than in the newer quarter without. There are few, if any, frame structures and these evidently patched in where some fire has swept away more substantial predecessors. This part of Panama is reminiscent of many small towns of Spain or Portugal. The galleries nod at each other across streets too narrow to admit the burning sun, or to permit the passage of more than one vehicle at a time. The older churches, or their ruins, diversify the city streets, and the Cathedral Plaza in the very center with the great open café of the historic Hotel Centrale at one side has a distinctly foreign flavor. Here as one sits in the open listening to the native band and sipping a drink—softer, if one be wise, than that the natives thrive upon—and watches the native girls of every shade and in gayest dress driving or loitering past, one feels far from the bustling North American world, far from that snap and ginger and hustle on which Americans pride themselves. And then perhaps the music is suddenly punctuated by heavy dull “booms”, like a distant cannonade, and one knows that only a few miles away dynamite is rending rock and man is grappling fiercely with nature.
Carnival occupies the four days preceding Ash Wednesday, the period known in all Catholic countries as the Mardi Gras. For years its gaiety has been preceded by a vigorous political contest for the high honor of being Queen of the Carnival, though it is said that in later years this rivalry has been less determined than of yore. At one time, however, it was contended for as strenuously as though the presidency of the republic was at stake and the two political parties—liberal and conservative—made it as much a stake of political activity as though the destiny of the State was involved. Happy the young woman who had a father able and willing to foot the bills, for no corrupt practices act intervened to save candidates from the wiles of the campaign grafter, or to guard the integrity of the voter from the insidious temptations of the man with a barrel.
It would be chivalric to say that the one issue in the campaign is the beauty of the respective candidates, but alas for a mercenary age! The sordid spirit of commercialism has crept in and the Panamanian papa must look upon the ambitions of his beauteous daughter as almost as expensive as a six cylinder automobile, a trip to Europe, or a yearning for a titled husband. But sometimes there are compensations. It is whispered that for one in retail trade in a large way it is no bad advertisement to have a Carnival Queen for a daughter.
SOME CARNIVAL FLOATS
In the car shown in the upper right-hand corner is the Queen of the Carnival of 1913
We have tried carnivals in various of our more cold-blooded American cities, but we cannot get the spirit. Our floats are more artistic and expensive, our decorations are more lavish, but we sit and view the parade with detached calmness as though the revelers were hired clowns. In Panama everybody joins in the sport. The line of carriages around the park in the Plaza Centrale, thence by the Avenida to the Plaza Santa Ana and back is unbroken. The confetti falls like a January snow and the streets are ankle deep. Everyone is in mask and you can never tell whether the languishing eyes peering out upon you are set in a face of pearl or of ebony. The noise of innumerable horns and rattles rises to Heaven and reverberates in the narrow streets, while the bells jangle out of tune, as is their custom. Oh, those bells of Panama! Never were so many peals and chimes out of harmony. Stedman, who heard them only in an ordinary moment, not in their Mardi Gras madness, put them to verse thus:
“Loudly the cracked bells overhead
Of San Francisco ding
With Santa Ana, La Merced,
Felipe answering.
Banged all at once, and four times four
Morn, noon and night the more and more,
Clatter and clang with huge uproar,
The bells of Panama”.
