PANAMA, New Granada, }
Jan. 7, 1849. }
JAMES GORDON BENNETT,
_Editor of the N. Y. Herald_:
When three miles from Panama, I saw two spires of the largest and most
imposing cathedrals here—larger than any church in America. On either
side I beheld the Cordileras and the Andes, towering high up towards the
glorious sun—the Cordileras connecting the Andes with the Rocky
Mountains. As you near the city, you are gradually lead upon a
beautifully paved road—paved by Pizzaro, the fiend, under whose
superintendence the path from there to Cruces was made, through which
Pizzaro, with his terrible banditti, often passed. On entering the city,
the natives outside the gates were singing and dancing merrily in honor
of some festival. Boys were flying their kites on the road, which they
seemed to enjoy like the youth of all countries. There kites were made
in the form of a coffin, and fringed on the sides with a very curious
tail, partially resembling a rattlesnake. The more genteel natives wore
white dresses and Panama hats. These hats are not made in Panama, but at
St. Helena, and other places on the coast, which was news for me. Panama
contains an impoverished population, whose leading maintenance is a few
merchants of very little energy, who deal in British drillings and
manufactures of various kinds. There are some choice relics of the old
Castilians who are never seen in the streets by day, but who walk in
their rear balconies in the evening to inhale the tropic air. The female
Castilians are as beautiful as the Georgians or Circassians, and will
not recognize the common natives, nor even the English or Americans, nor
the aristocracy or nobility of any country as their equals. I had the
fortune, through influential letters to a large mercantile house here,
to get an introduction to a Castilian family, and I was invited to a
rural gathering of the friends and relatives of this family. The
loveliest girl I ever saw is the daughter of the gentleman who is at the
head of the family. To attempt a description of her accomplishments and
extraordinary personal fascinations, would be as impossible as to
describe the horrors of a trip up the Chagres, and especially the defile
from this to Cruces, which still haunts, and will haunt me for a long
period. The best description I can convey to my countrymen of the river
Chagres, is its comparison with the river Styx, and you can form a
slight conception of the defile between this and Cruces by its
comparison with purgatory, as described by an illiterate and boisterous
parson; and you can appreciate the loveliness of this Castilian female,
by fancying that she is the very prototype of the unearthly Cleopatra,
the accomplished and captivating queen of ancient Egypt, who was
familiar with all the dialects of the East (thirty in number), whose
glowing eloquence and brilliant eye, and majestic form, and perfect
symmetry of mind and body and feature, only could have allured the
eloquent, rich, and noble Anthony from his ambition of military glory
and his love of his native country. The Cathedral is dingy and very
gloomy. All the bells are cracked, and their doleful tones thrill the
senses. I saw the leading priest to-day, who seems very old and infirm.
In front of the Cathedral, are the Twelve Apostles, with the Saviour.
The spires are adorned with pearls, with which the coast abounds. I have
visited the temples, jails, walls, churches, old governors’ palaces and
trenches, and my heart was filled with pensive emotions, as I gazed on
these crumbling ruins of other generations. The best idea I can give
about this place, is its comparison with New York, after the great fires
of 1835 and ’46. The tortures and mode of life here are very peculiar. I
slept on a bare cot, and with only one sheet over me—sweat like blazes.
The meats and cooking are extremely novel. Lizzards, spiders,
musquitoes, galinippers and ants, crawl around and over me, and often
penetrate the ears and nose. Some lizzards gathered around my head the
other night and awoke me, which I scattered very quick. I think they
were preparing to play some trick on me, and perhaps even contemplated
the decapitation of my beloved proboscis, as one of the rascals was
smelling around my nostrils when I suddenly awoke. I hate lizzards, but
I can stand spiders and alligators, and the other animalculae of the
country tolerably well. A girl only ten years of age was married to-day.
This seems incredible, but you may repose implicit confidence in its
truth. Females mature more rapidly here than in any other part of the
earth. At eight and nine there is often every indication of puberty. I
saw the young “lady” of ten, who was married to-day. I was utterly
astonished at her prodigious maturity. She was extremely beautiful, and
her glances were bewitching, and she seemed very devoted to her young
and enthusiastic lover. It rains or pours in these latitudes ten months
in the year, which the natives call the wet season. The other two months
are called the dry season, when it only rains about twelve times a day.
The lightning is sometimes incessant, and the thunder is terrific and
makes the alligators look glassy about the eye. We had a shock of an
earthquake last night which lasted some seconds. It created quite a
sensation among the emigrants, but it did not terrify the natives, as
they are used to earthquakes. A small lizzard crawled into the ear of an
emigrant, who lives near the shore, which nearly killed him. I attended
the Cathedral this morning, and the music and ceremonies were grateful
to my heart. After the solemn scenes of last week, and the death of a
beloved friend on Tuesday last. The attendance was not large. Youth,
age, decrepitude, competence, affluence, penury and utter rags, all
knelt side by side. Six priests of various grades were present. As I
gazed on these splendid ruins, at the images, paintings and costly
decorations, and grasped a retrospect of the long line of generations of
Spanish nobility who had worshipped in its sacred aisles, and gazed down
to the sepulchres of their fathers, contrasting this dismal structure
with its tottering walls and spires, with its ancient glory, and as I
gazed on its wildness and dilapidated magnificence, I was impressed with
the most solemn and overwhelming emotions. Last evening I visited the
ramparts, that encircle a portion of the city. The work is truly
beautiful and exhilarating at early twilight, when the burning sun is
gone, and when, as in last evening, the full moon was emerging with
uncommon splendor from the far horizon of a tranquil sea. A group of
lovely children just passed my window, followed by their slaves, with
gorgeous turbans clad in red, white and blue. A passenger just entered
my apartment and informs me that while dozing in his canoe on the banks
of the Chagres, he was suddenly aroused from his slumber and saw an
enormous alligator crawling over the base of his canoe, when he sprang
and leaped to the shore and ran for his life up the embankment with the
alligator in hot pursuit, which nearly caught him by the tail of his
coat. He rushed into the hut of a friendly native, and closed and barred
the door, and flew to the roof, where he found piles of stones for
defensive operations, and immediately opened a battery of flying stones
at the alligator, causing him to retreat and disappear beneath the
waters of the Chagres. There are turkey buzzards in countless thousands
hovering over the city, which greatly alarm the natives. Such flocks
were never seen before. The timid and superstitious natives predict the
most awful visitations from the sudden appearance of so many buzzards,
which darken the air like a cloud with their hideous presence. Some of
the natives prognosticate a famine, or others fatal convulsions of
nature. My chum predicts extraordinary heat (theremometer now about 100
in the shade), and a shower of rain (only rained six times to-day,) and
other calamities. But I do not fear these terrible disasters from the
advent of large flocks of turkey buzzards, as I have been taught to
scout every thing in the form of representation.