Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose

by Willis J. Abbot

BURDEN BEARERS ON THE SAVANNA

Just now the wine and wassail of Taboga is limited to about six grog shops, which seems an oversupply for the handful of fishermen who inhabit its tumble-down hovels. Each bar, too, has its billiard table and one is reminded of Mark Twain’s islands in the South Sea where the people earned an honest living by taking in each other’s washing. One wonders if the sole industry of the Tabogans is playing billiards. There is indeed little to support the town save fishing, and that, if one may judge from specimens carried through the lanes, must be good. Some of the boats at anchor or drawn up on the beach attest to some prosperity amongst them that go down to the sea in ships. One that I saw rigged with a fore-and-aft sail and a jigger was hewn out of a single log like a river cayuca and had a beam exceeding four feet. Before many of the houses were lines hung with long strips of fish hanging out to dry, for it is a curious property of this atmosphere that despite its humidity it will cure animal tissues, both fish and flesh, quickly and without taint.

HOTEL AT BOUQUETTE, CHIRIQUI
The only point in Panama at which Canal employees may spend their vacations

Agriculture in Taboga is limited to the culture of the pineapple, and the local variety is so highly esteemed in the Panama markets that some measure of prosperity might attend upon the Tabogans would they but undertake the raising of pines systematically and extensively. But not they. Their town was founded in 1549 when, at the instance of Las Casas, the King of Spain gave freedom to all Indian slaves. Taboga was set apart as a residence for a certain part of these freedmen. Now what did the freedom from slavery mean but freedom from work? This view was probably held in the 16th century and certainly obtains in Taboga today, having been enhanced no doubt by the liberal mixture of negro blood with that of the native Indians. If the pineapples grow without too much attention well and good. They will be sold and the grog shops will know that real money has come into town. But as for seriously extending the business—well, that is a thing to think of for a long, long time and the thought has not yet ripened. It is a wonder that the Chinese who hold the retail trade of the island and who are painstaking gardeners have not taken up this industry.

A BIT OF ANCON HOSPITAL GROUNDS

We may laugh at the easy-going Tabogan if we will, but I do not think that anyone will come out of his church without a certain respect for his real religious sentiment. ’Tis but a little church, of stuccoed rubble, fallen badly into decay, flanked by a square tower holding two bells, and penetrated by so winding and narrow a stair that one ascending it may feel as a corkscrew penetrating a cork.

But within it shows signs of a reverent affection by its flock not common in Latin-American churches. We may laugh a little at the altar decorations which are certainly not costly and may be a little tawdry, but they show evidences of patient work on the part of the women, and contributions by the men from the slender gains permitted them by the harsh land and the reluctant sea. About the walls hang memorial tablets, not richly sculptured indeed, but showing a pious desire on the part of bygone generations to have the virtue of their loved ones commemorated within hallowed walls. Standing in a side aisle was an effigy of Christ, of human size, bearing the cross up the hill of Gethsemane. The figure stood on a sort of platform, surrounded by six quaint lanterns of panes of glass set in leaded frames of a design seen in the street lamps of the earlier Spanish cities. The platform was on poles for bearers, after the fashion of a sedan chair, and we learned from one who, more fortunate than we, had been there to see, that in Holy Week there is a sort of Passion Play—rude and elementary it is true, but bringing to the surface all the religious emotionalism of the simple people. The village is crowded with the faithful from afar, who make light of any lack of shelter in that kindly tropic air. The Taboga young men dress as Roman soldiers, the village maidens take their parts in the simple pageant. The floats, such as the one we saw, are borne up and down the village streets which no horse could ever tread, and the church is crowded with devotional worshipers until Easter comes with the joyous tidings of the Resurrection.