PANAMA NEW AND OLD
The Panama which Sharp and his men approached in their bobbing little
canoes after that memorable trip across Darien, was the same city which
still looks forth across the Pacific from the shadow of Ancon Hill. But
it has altered greatly since the time when the pirates, knives in
teeth, swarmed over the taffrails of the Spanish ships and in
hand-to-hand battle won the day. And yet in many ways the description
given of the town by Ringrose would serve as well for the present town.
He says:
It stands in a deep bay and in form is round, excepting only that
part where it runs along the sea side. Formerly it stood four miles
to the east where it was taken by Sir Henry Morgan but then being
burnt they removed it to the place where it now stands. This new
city of which I speak is much bigger than the old one and is built
for the most part of brick, the rest being of stone and tiled. The
churches (not yet finished) are eight in number, whereof the chief
is called Santa Maria. The extent of the city comprehends better
than a mile in breadth and a mile and a half in length. The houses
for the most part are three stories high. It is well walled round
about with two gates belonging thereto, excepting only where a
creek comes into the city, the which, at high water, lets in barks,
to furnish the inhabitants with all sorts of necessities.... Round
about the city for the space of seven leagues, more or less, all
the country is savanna. Only here and there is to be seen a spot of
woody land.
There the similarity of Ringrose’s description to the present city
ceases, for he goes on to say:
The ground whereon the city stands is very damp and moist, which
renders the place of bad repute for the concern of health. The
water is also very full of worms. Here, one night after our
arrival, we found worms three quarters of an inch in length both in
our bed clothes and other apparel.
Of very “bad repute” for the “concern of health” was Panama, not only
in the buccaneers’ days, but up to the time when Yankee engineers and
Yankee energy and brains took charge and transformed the place from a
pest-hole into a clean and sanitary city, wherein the death-rate is now
as low as in the best of Northern cities. But no one except Ringrose
has ever called attention to the “worms,” though no doubt even to-day
he or any one else would find numerous other detestable creatures both
in his “bed clothes and other apparel” after a night spent in a native
Panamanian hotel or on a Panamanian ship in the offing.
Unquestionably, could Ringrose and his comrades look upon Panama from
the sea to-day they would recognize it, and could point out many a
familiar landmark, for outwardly the town has altered little. The walls
“round about” have disappeared in places, the “creek” is now dry land,
and where it was are buildings and streets; and the eight churches, and
more, have been finished, and many of them have crumbled to ruin in the
long years since Sharp’s literary pilot wrote his description. But the
town is still “round” except where it “runs along the sea side.” Its
houses are still mainly of brick and stone and tiles, and are mostly
two or three stories in height, and about it still stretch the savannas
with their spots of “woody land.”
But if the meticulous Ringrose could but step into Panama to-day he
would find it a very different city from the one he knew. Along the
smooth asphalt streets pass scores of jitneys, motor-cars, and rumbling
trolley-cars. Busy shops and great stores line the narrow sidewalks,
electric lights blaze everywhere at night, people of every color and
nationality throng the thoroughfares; motor-driven fire-engines,
glorious in red and gold, dash clangingly to infrequent fires. There
are ice-plants and breweries, great power-plants and saw-mills,
cabarets and motion-picture theaters; a splendid, white concrete
railway station and even electric signs. In other words, Panama to-day
is thoroughly up-to-date, a modern, clean, busy, and attractive town,
externally unaltered but internally completely transformed, while even
more modern and typically American, in sharp contrast to the typically
Spanish Panama, Ancon and Balboa rise upon the slopes of the hills
behind the old city that Ringrose and Sharp looked upon. But despite
its modernity in innumerable ways, Panama is still a bit of the Old
World, a bit of old Spain, a city of Spanish architecture and Spanish
plazas, with many a narrow, quaintly steep, and out-of-the-way street,
where the jutting balconies and grilled windows almost meet above one’s
head; with many a spot where time seems to have stood still while the
rest of the city went on, and with many a relic, many a survival of the
Panama of three centuries ago.
At the tip-end of the city is the old fortress of Chiriqui and the
Bovedas,—now used as a prison but still reminiscent of buccaneer
days,—a rambling structure partly above and partly under ground, with
low, broad walls and outstanding sentry-boxes, mellow with age and
unchanged from the day when it was built for the purpose of keeping the
dreaded and hated pirates from this treasure-house of Spain.
Along Avenue A, at the corner of Ninth Street, is the Herera Plaza, now
a children’s playground, the spot where the creek came into the city
which at high water let in barks. And a few steps up the hill on Ninth
Street, at the corner of Avenida Central, is the Piza Piza store, which
was once the Hotel Aspinwall, and which, not so long ago, was at the
waterfront of the same creek which Ringrose mentioned. Farther along
Avenue A, fragments of that massive wall “round about the city with two
gates” may be seen half concealed by houses and shops and partly in
ruins but still frowning and grim wherever it stands, while on Eleventh
Street it borders one side of the thoroughfare for nearly an entire
block. This, in the days of Ringrose, was the limit of the city to the
west, for Panama was by no means as large as he thought, but as it has
grown it has overflowed the old walls and has left them isolated in the
heart of the town like forgotten tombstones.
Some of the churches of which the pirate historian wrote are still to
be seen, though mostly in ruins, for in the fire which swept the city
in 1756 many of them were destroyed, and few were rebuilt. Santa Maria,
the “chief” one mentioned by Ringrose, has been superseded by the
cathedral with its pearl-shell-studded towers. San Francisco, on
Bolivar Plaza, has been modernized, externally at least, until it is no
longer recognizable, although its massive iron-studded portals with
their gigantic knockers a dozen feet above the street are still there.
Las Mercedes, at Avenida Central and occupying the block from Eighth to
Ninth Street, and Santa Ana on Santa Ana Plaza have been kept in repair
and remodeled. San Domingo, on Avenue A at Third Street, with its
celebrated flat arch, is scarcely more than a ruin, and crumbling walls
and falling masonry mark many another, while San Felipe de Neri, at
Avenue B and Fourth Street, remains as it was in Ringrose’s day.
Doubtless the chronicler often looked upon its great walls, with
stagings and ladders against them, and artisans at work, for San Felipe
was being built at the time of the buccaneers’ visit and was completed
in 1688.
These old churches are very interesting, even those in ruins; veritable
architectural curiosities, marvelous in their construction, for they
were built of the wreckage salvaged from the ruins of Old Panama.
Brick, cut stone, rubble, bits of ornately carved stone, odds and
ends—a hodgepodge of material forms their walls, and often, amid the
crumbling heterogeneous masonry, one may see some beautifully decorated
niche with its carven saint still intact and with its paint-work and
colored plaster as fresh and bright as though the rains and storms of
centuries had not beaten upon it.
But the most interesting church of all, the most interesting spot in
the whole of Panama City, is modest little San José at Eighth Street
and Avenue A, a plain white building, bare-walled and unimpressive
externally, but containing within the most gloriously dazzling sight in
all the republic—the golden altar of San José, whose history reads like
a romance and links the time of Morgan with the present. When the
pirates took old San Lorenzo, at the mouth of the Chagres, and word was
carried to Panama that the dreaded freebooters were on Panamanian soil
and making for the city, the terrified inhabitants rushed madly to
secrete and safeguard what treasures they possessed. The churches were
filled with a wealth of gold and silver vessels, jeweled chalices and
crucifixes, vestments heavy with gems and gold: and in San José,
richest of all the houses of God in the treasure-filled town, was the
famous, priceless altar of solid gold. Formed from the tithe of all
gold that came to Panama which was paid the church, this marvelous
structure was of plates of beaten metal beautifully chased, delicately
fashioned—a masterpiece of art worth a fabulous sum for the metal
alone.
Hastily the priests and monks gathered together their treasures, and
the Fathers of San José dismantled their altar and, stripping their
church, loaded their precious cargo on a waiting ship and put to sea,
along with many another craft bearing wealth untold. When the pirates
arrived, they found little in the way of ecclesiastical riches, and
ships were seized and sent in chase of the vessels, for by means of
torture Morgan had learned of their departure. But, though some were
overhauled and their treasures looted, the craft bearing the golden
altar of San José was never found.
Many of the ships that fled from the threatened city were never heard
from; no one knows their fate. Some no doubt were wrecked on
uninhabited parts of the coast, as befell on the shores of Darien. On
others, perchance, the crews mutinied and, killing their officers, made
off with the cargo, while rumor has it that much of the salvaged
treasure was buried on outlying islets and cays to keep it secure from
future pirate raids. But at any rate, chaos reigned after the
destruction of the city, and when the Spaniards moved from the scene of
slaughter and pillage and founded the new town the priests of San José
built themselves a church on Avenue A, a severely plain little building
close to the city walls and near that creek that Ringrose mentions. And
within their church, in place of the wondrous thing of gleaming gold,
the priests erected an insignificant white altar. Through fire and
flood, through lean and prosperous years, the little church and its
modest altar passed in safety. Dread of pirates troubled the Fathers of
San José not at all. They had nothing to tempt robbers, and gradually,
as the years passed, the famous altar and its story were forgotten. But
at last came a time when there was no longer fear of buccaneers, when
the despotic rule of Spain was ended, when revolutions were no more,
and when, under the protection of Uncle Sam, the new republic was sure
of a peaceful and stable future.
Then, for a time, the Fathers of San José worked quietly and in secret;
the little white altar was scraped and cleaned; and lo, the covering of
paint removed, the golden altar once more blazed forth in all its
long-forgotten glory!
There in the unimposing little church it stands, beneath a great window
of rich stained-glass through which the sun beats down in dazzling
radiance upon the burnished surface of the mass of gold. Unchanged in
all its delicate chasing and engraving, as beautiful and wonderful as
when it shone in its brilliancy in old Panama, the altar of San José
has endured through the centuries, unsuspected, a secret known only to
the Fathers of the church, to burst from its chrysalis of white paint
when the time was ripe. Probably it is the only treasure that survived
the pirates’ raid and still exists, the only remnant of that stupendous
store of priceless treasure which made Old Panama famous as the richest
city of New Spain.
But aside from this altar, so strangely and romantically saved from the
pillage and destruction of Panama, there is much to be seen of the old
city laid low by Morgan and his men. By motor-car one may travel easily
and quickly to the spot, a scant five miles along the shore from the
present city.
First of the ruins to be seen is the low, arched bridge of stone,
partly fallen but still spanning a little tidal stream—the very bridge
across which Morgan and his pirates swarmed on that fateful day in
1671. Beyond and to the left is the still massive ruin of a great
building; to the right are others; and standing, still majestic, above
all, is the tower of the old cathedral, all that remains of St.
Anastasio. In its roofless aisles great trees have grown; from crevices
and chinks in the masonry, plants, bushes, and vines have sprung; but
still the tower stands intact, the same “beautiful building whereof
makes a fair show at a distance like that of St. Paul’s in London,” as
Ringrose described it.
But it took a homesick seaman who had been long absent from London
Town, and had, perchance, dim memories of St. Paul’s, to see the
similarity between that mighty pile and St. Anastasio’s lonely tower.
Still, it is impressive as it stands there, a vivid reminder of the
pirates’ ruthlessness, a fitting monument to the countless innocent
people who died within its shadow and whose bones have long since
crumbled to dust among the undergrowth of this forsaken spot.
Close to the old church and at the very edge of the sea, still stands a
remnant of the city wall and the forts at the harbor mouth, and
scattered about among the underbrush are many other walls and ruins.
Unappreciative of such matters, though ever boastful of the ruins, the
Panamanians have allowed the site of Old Panama to be defiled by a
disreputable cantina or drinking- and dance-hall; and they have
neglected the place until, for the most part, it is a mere tangle, a
miniature jungle of weeds, bushes, and trees.
Dr. Dexter, while superintendent of the schools of Panama, devoted a
great deal of time to a thorough investigation of the ruins; and with
the aid of natives, supplied by the Government, the place was cleaned
of brush, and careful measurements and plans were made. From these Dr.
Dexter modeled a reproduction of the ruins of accurate scale, and then
secured from the archives of Seville copies of the original reports and
descriptions of Panama as it was in Morgan’s day.
From these data we know that the city was very different from the
generally accepted ideas of that “goode and statelye city” which
Esquemelling described as having “two thousand houses of magnificent
and prodigeous building, being all or the greatest part inhabited by
merchants of that country, who are vastly rich. For the rest of the
inhabitants of lesser quality and tradesmen, this city contained five
thousand houses more.” If by “magnificent and prodigeous building” the
chronicler of the raid meant stone or brick buildings, then he was
utterly at fault, for the official records show that there were few
buildings of stone or of note, and that the majority of the houses, as
well as some of the public buildings, were of wattled cane, wood, and
adobe thatched with palm. Moreover, the bulk of these were little more
than huts, and in the official description of the town the dwellings
were divided into two classes,—those with floors and those without,—and
those minus flooring were greatly in the majority.
But there is no reason to think that Esquemelling meant that the
“magnificent and prodigeous building” or the lesser houses were of
stone. Indeed, he specifically says: “All the houses of this city were
built with cedar, being of a very curious and magnificent structure.”
Had the town been of solid stone and masonry, as has been assumed
(although the buccaneers’ accounts do not state this), it would have
been a difficult matter to burn it to the ground, whereas we can
readily understand how the conflagration swept the hundreds of flimsy
wooden and cane structures before it and left only the indestructible
stone walls and buildings standing.
Unquestionably, in comparison with other cities of its day Panama was a
“goode and statelye” town, for it contained the massive St. Anastasio
Cathedral, seven monasteries, and two nunneries; at least four
churches, a hospital, a great number of stables wherein were kept the
horses and mules used in transporting treasure and merchandise over the
Gold Road; a huge public market; a “statelye and magnificent house
belonging to the Genoese for their trade and commerce in negroes”; a
number of big warehouses; barracks; a governor’s house; a vault wherein
were stored the treasures to be transported; and several forts, most of
which were of massive stone construction. The ruins of all of these may
still be traced, although the greater portion of the ruined churches,
monasteries, and other buildings were torn down and the material
carried to the new city of Panama, where it was used in constructing
the buildings.
In clearing up the ruins, Dr. Dexter also secured an enormous
collection of odds and ends, many of which were of great historical
interest. There were bottles and glassware; crockery; buttons; coins;
remains of daggers, guns, and pistols; sword hilts; locks; household
utensils, et cetera. Some of them were in a good state of preservation,
but most of them had been partly melted by the flames and illustrated
graphically the terrific heat of the fire which Esquemelling tells us
“continued for four weeks after the day it began.”
Never in the history of piracy has there been such wanton destruction.
Not only was the city burned, but, out of pure villainy, Morgan set the
torch to two hundred warehouses in which the pirate chief had placed
“great numbers of slaves together with an infinite number of sacks of
meal.”
There has been much confusion as to the origin of the fire, and it has
been contended that it was accidental, or that the residents started
the blaze in order to keep the pirates from occupying the town. But
there is not the least question that it was the deliberate act of
Morgan, who was in a frenzy of demoniacal rage when he found that after
his hard battle and heavy losses the bulk of the valuables had been
“transported to remote and occult places.” Esquemelling, who was
present at the sack of the town and who should know the truth, states
particularly:
The same day about noon [the day the town was taken] he caused
certain men privately to set fire to several great edifices of the
city, nobody knowing whence the fire proceeded nor who were the
authors thereof, much less what motives persuaded Captain Morgan
thereto, which are as yet unknown to this day.
But he goes on to say:
Captain Morgan endeavored to make the public believe the Spaniards
had been the cause thereof, which suspicions he surmised among his
own people, perceiving they reflected upon him for that action.
That the houses were, as I have said, of flimsy construction is evident
from Esquemelling’s statement that “in less than half an hour the fire
consumed a whole street”; and later he says, speaking of the Genoese
slave market: “This building likewise was commanded by Captain Morgan
to be set on fire; whereby it was burnt to the ground.”
Doubtless the villainous Morgan, finding his own men demurred at thus
destroying a city without cause (and perhaps realizing that by so doing
he could not demand the usual ransom), endeavored to put the blame on
the unfortunate inhabitants, as Esquemelling says, but he was a ready
liar, an utterly unprincipled scoundrel, and time and again betrayed
the trust his men placed in him. So there is no use in trying to lessen
the blackness of his character by endeavoring to absolve him of the
crime of burning old Panama or of cremating the helpless slaves.
The taking of the city was the most noteworthy exploit ever performed
by the buccaneers; in accomplishing it they displayed unparalleled
bravery; they endured untold hardships and sufferings; they conquered
against overwhelming odds, and with a scant one thousand men Morgan
achieved what many a general with an army at his back would have
hesitated to undertake. But he spoiled all by his execrable cruelty and
by wanton, ruthless destruction, and to the end of time the sack of
Panama will remain as the most utterly disgraceful and detestable crime
of the British buccaneers. As long as the crumbling stones of Old
Panama stand they will remain mute testimonials of the most despicable
act of that most despicable rascal, Sir Henry Morgan.