SAN LORENZO AND PANAMA
Two years of the joys of Port Royal emptied the pockets of the
buccaneers. The money that passed from hand to hand over the gambling
tables went thence into the pockets of the hordes of women from Spain,
France and even England who flocked to that den of thieves, and from
them into the coffers of merchants who took it back to Europe. As the
money slowly disappeared the men clamored to be led on another raid. So
great a reputation had Captain Morgan won that desperadoes from all
corners of the world flocked to Jamaica seeking enrollment in his
service. He had but to give out the tidings that he planned a new raid
to have as fine an assortment of picturesque cutthroats begging for
enlistment as ever appeared outside the pages of a dime novel.
Designating the south side of the island of Tortuga as a rendezvous, he
wrote certain gentry whom Esquemeling in a matter of fact way calls “the
ancient and expert Pirates there abiding”, asking their coöperation. By
the 24th of October, 1670, he had gathered together 37 ships fully
armed and victualled, with 2000 fighting men besides mariners and boys.
The chief ship mounted 22 great guns and six small brass cannon.
[Illustration: MOUTH OF THE CHAGRES RIVER
San Lorenzo stands on the brow of the cliff. The watch tower may be seen
faintly uplifted]
With this force Morgan first attacked the island of San Caterina,
expecting to capture there some Indian or Spaniard who would guide him
to Panama, for the sack of that city had been determined upon in
preference to either Vera Cruz or Cartagena, because it was richer. The
people of the island were in no condition to resist the overwhelming
force of the English, but the governor begged Morgan to make a sham
attack in order that his credit and that of his officers might be
maintained at home, and accordingly much powder was ineffectively
burned. It sounds like a cheap device, but it has been frequently
employed in war when resistance was obviously futile, and some deference
to uninformed home opinion was prudent.
Having secured his guides, by the easy process of putting on the rack
all the Indians captured until one was found willing to lead the raiders
through his native land, Morgan determined to move on Panama by the
Chagres River route, probably in order to take with him heavy artillery
which could scarcely be dragged through the jungle. The first step
toward the navigation of the river was the capture of Fort Lorenzo which
stood on a high bluff at its mouth. Against this famous fortress,
therefore, he sent Col. Bradley (or Brodley as he is sometimes called)
with four ships and about 400 men, while he himself remained at St.
Catherine to conceal from the Spaniards his ultimate design against
Panama.
[Illustration: MOUTH OF THE CHAGRES FROM THE FORT
The upper picture shows the sea beach on the Pacific Coast littered with
drift-wood]
The visitor to Colon should not fail, before crossing to the Pacific
side of the Isthmus, to visit the ruins of the Castle of San Lorenzo.
The trip is not an easy one, and must usually be arranged for in
advance, but the end well repays the exertion. The easiest way, when the
weather permits, is to charter a tug or motor boat and make the journey
by sea--a trip of two or three hours at most. But the Caribbean is a
tempestuous and a treacherous sea. One may wait days for weather
permitting the trip to be made in comfort, and even then may find a
stormy afternoon succeed to a calm morning. For this reason it is
essential that a seaworthy boat be procured and, if not essential, very
desirable that the company be not subject to the qualms of seasickness.
[Illustration: _Photo by T. J. Marine_
THE SALLY-PORT AT SAN LORENZO
An unusual picture because of the clearing away of the jungle.
Ordinarily the walls are hidden]
To my mind the more interesting way to visit the ruins is to take the
railroad out to Gatun, and there at the very base of the roaring
spillway, board a power boat and chug down the sluggish Chagres to the
river’s mouth where stands the ancient fort. The boats obtainable are
not of the most modern model and would stand a slender chance in speed
contests. But in one, however slow, you are lost to all appearance of
civilization five minutes after you cast off from the clay bank. At
Gatun, the canal which has been carried through the artificial lake made
by damming the Chagres River, turns sharply away from that water course
on the way to the new port of Balboa. The six or eight miles of the
tropical river which we are to traverse have been untouched by the
activities of the canal builders. The sluggish stream flows between
walls of dense green jungle, as silent as though behind their barrier
only a mile or two away there were not men by the thousands making great
flights of aquatic steps to lift the world’s ocean carriers over the
hills. Once in awhile through the silent air comes the distant boom of a
blast in Culebra, only an infrequent reminder of the presence of
civilized man and his explosive activities. Infrequent though it is,
however, it has been sufficient to frighten away the more timid
inhabitants of the waterside--the alligators, the boas and the monkeys.
Only at rare intervals are any of these seen now, though in the earlier
days of the American invasion the alligators and monkeys were plentiful.
Today the chief signs of animal life are the birds--herons, white and
blue, flying from pool to pool or posing artistically on logs or in
shallows; great cormorant ducks that fly up and down midstream,
apparently unacquainted with the terrors of the shotgun; kingfishers in
bright blue and paroquets in gaudy colors. The river is said to be full
of fish, including sharks, for the water is saline clear up to the Gatun
locks.
I know of no spot, easy of access, on the Isthmus where an idea of the
beauty and the terror of the jungle can be better gained than on the
lower Chagres. The stout green barrier comes flush to the water’s edge,
the mangroves at places wading out on their stilt-like roots into the
stream like a line of deployed skirmishers. That green wall looks light,
beautiful, ethereal even, but lay your boat alongside it and essay to
land. You will find it yielding indeed, but as impenetrable as a wall of
adamant. It will receive you as gently as the liquid amber welcomes the
fly, and hold you as inexorably in its beautiful embrace when you are
once entrapped. The tender fern, the shrinking sensitive plant, the
flowering shrub, the bending sapling, the sturdy and towering tree are
all tied together by lithe, serpentine, gnarled and unbreakable vines
which seem to spring from the ground and hang from the highest branches
as well. There are not enough inches of ground to support the vegetation
so it grows from the trees living literally on the air. Every green
thing that can bear a thorn seems to have spines and prickers to tear
the flesh, and to catch the clothing and hold the prisoner fast. Try it
and you will see why no large mammals roam in the jungle; only the
snakes and the lizards creeping down below the green tangle can attain
large size and move.
[Illustration: CHURCH AT CHAGRES
Up the steep path in the foreground the buccaneers charged upon Fort
Lorenzo]
And how beautiful it all is! The green alone would be enough, but it is
varied by the glowing orange poll of a lignum vitæ tree, the bright
scarlet of the hibiscus, the purple of some lordly tree whose name the
botanist will know but not the wayfarer. Color is in splotches on every
side, from the wild flowers close to the river’s brink to great yellow
blossoms on the tops of trees so tall that they tower over the forests
like light-houses visible for miles around. Orchids in more delicate
shades, orchids that would set Fifth Avenue agog, are here to be had for
a few blows of a machete. It is a riot and a revel of color--as gay as
the decorations of some ancient arena before the gladiatorial combats
began. For life here is a steady battle too, a struggle between man and
the jungle and woe to the man who invades the enemy’s country alone or
strays far from the trail, shadowy and indistinct as that may be.
“A man ought to be able to live quite a while lost in the jungle,” said
a distinguished magazine writer who was with me on the upper Chagres
once. We had been listening to our guide’s description of the game, and
edible fruits in the forest.
“Live about two days if he couldn’t find the trail or the river’s bank,”
was the response of the Man Who Knew. “If he lived longer he’d live
crazy. Torn by thorns, often poisoned, bitten by venomous insects,
blistered by thirst, with the chances against his finding any fruit that
was safe eating, he would probably die of the pain and of jungle madness
before starvation brought a more merciful death. The jungle is a cat
that tortures its captives; a python that embraces them in its graceful
folds and hugs them to death; a siren whose beauty lured them to
perdition. Look out for it.”
The native Indian knows it and avoids it by doing most of his traveling
by canoe. On our trip to the river’s mouth we passed many in their
slender cayucas, some tied by a vine to the bank patiently fishing,
others on their way to or from market with craft well loaded with
bananas on the way up, but light coming back, holding gay converse with
each other across the dark and sullen stream. Here and there through
breaks in the foliage we see a native house, or a cluster of huts, not
many however, for the jungle is too thick and the land too low here for
the Indians who prefer the bluffs and occasional broad savannas of the
upper waters. As we approach its outlet the river, about fifty or sixty
yards wide thus far, broadens into a considerable estuary, and rounding
a point we see before us the blue Atlantic breaking into white foam on a
bar which effectually closes the river to all save the smallest boats,
and which you may be sure the United States will never dredge away, to
open a ready water-way to the base of the Gatun locks. To the left
covering a low point, level as if artificially graded, is a beautiful
cocoanut grove, to the right, across a bay perhaps a quarter of a mile
wide is a native village of about fifty huts with an iron roofed church
in the center--beyond the village rises a steep hill densely covered
with verdure, so that it is only by the keenest searching that you can
pick out here a stone sentry tower, there the angle of a massive
wall--the ruins of the Castle of San Lorenzo.
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH MAGAZINE]
“Cloud crested San Lorenzo guards
The Chagres entrance still,
Though o’er each stone the moss hath grown
And earth his moat doth fill.
His bastions feeble with decay
Steadfastly view the sea,
And sternly wait the certain fate
The ages shall decree.”
[Illustration: SPANISH RUINS, PORTO BELLO]
We land in the cocoanut grove across the river from the ruins we have
come to see and the uninitiated among us wonder why. It appears however
that the descendants of the natives who so readily surrendered dominion
of the land to the Spaniards are made of sterner stuff than their
ancestors. Or perhaps it was because we had neither swords or
breastplates that they reversed the 16th century practice and extorted
tribute of silver from us for ferrying us across the stream in cayucas
when our own boats and boat-men would have given us a greater sense of
security. Landed in the village we were convoyed with great ceremony to
the alcalde’s hut where it was demanded that we register our names and
places of residence. Perhaps that gave us a vote in the Republic of
Panama, but we saw no political evidences about unless a small saloon,
in a hut thatched with palmetto leaves and with a mud floor and basket
work sides might be taken for a “headquarters”. Indeed the saloon and a
frame church were about the only signs of civilization about the town if
we except a bill posted in the alcalde’s office setting forth the
mysterious occult powers of a wizard and soothsayer who, among other
services to mankind, recounted a number of rich marriages which had been
made by the aid of his philters and spells.
[Illustration: OUR GUIDE AT SAN LORENZO]
We made our way from the village attended by volunteer guides in the
scantiest of clothing, across a little runway at the bottom of a ravine,
and so into the path that leads up the height crowned by the castle. It
was two hundred and fifty years ago, almost, that the little hollow ran
with a crimson fluid, and the bodies of dead Spaniards lay in the
rivulet where now the little native boys are cooling their feet. The
path is steep, rugged and narrow. Branches arch overhead and as the
trail has served as a runway for the downpour of innumerable tropical
rains the soil is largely washed away from between the stones, and the
climbing is hard.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AT SAN LORENZO]
“Not much fun carrying a steel helmet, a heavy leather jacket and a
twenty-pound blunderbuss up this road on a hot day, with bullets and
arrows whistling past,” remarks a heavy man in the van, and the picture
he conjures up of the Spanish assailants on that hot afternoon in 1780
seems very vivid. Although the fort, the remains of which are now
standing, is not the one which Morgan destroyed, the site, the natural
defenses and the plan of the works are identical. There was more wood in
the original fort than in that of which the remains are now
discernible--to which fact its capture was due.
[Illustration: LOOKING UP THE CHAGRES FROM SAN LORENZO]
The villagers every now and then cut away the dense underbrush which
grows in the ancient fosse and traverses and conceals effectually the
general plan of the fortress from the visitor. This cleaning up process
unveils to the eye the massive masonry, and the towering battlements as
shown by some of the illustrations here printed. But, except to the
scientific student of archaeology and of fortification, the ruins are
more picturesque as they were when I saw them, overgrown with creeping
vines and shrubs jutting out from every cornice and crevice, with the
walls so masked by the green curtain that when some sharp salient angle
boldly juts out before you, you start as you would if rounding the
corner of the Flatiron Building you should come upon a cocoanut palm
bending in the breeze. Here you come to great vaulted chambers, dungeons
lighted by but one barred casemate where on the muddy ground you see
rusty iron fetters weighing forty pounds or more to clamp about a
prisoner’s ankle or, for that matter, his neck.
The vaulted brick ceiling above is as perfect as the day Spanish
builders shaped it and the mortar betwixt the great stones forming the
walls is too hard to be picked away with a stout knife. Pushing through
the thicket which covers every open space you stumble over a dismounted
cannon, or a neat conical pile of rusty cannon balls, carefully prepared
for the shock of battle perhaps two hundred years ago and lying in
peaceful slumber ever since--a real Rip Van Winkle of a fortress it is,
with no likelihood of any rude awakening. In one spot seems to have been
a sort of central square. In the very heart of the citadel is a great
masonry tank to hold drinking water for the besieged. It was built
before the 19th century had made its entrance upon the procession of the
centuries, but the day I saw it the still water that it held reflected
the fleecy clouds in the blue sky, and no drop trickled through the
joints of the honest and ancient masonry. Back and forth through narrow
gates, in and out of vaulted chambers, down dark passages behind
twenty-foot walls you wander, with but little idea of the topography of
the place until you come to a little watch tower jutting out at one
corner of the wall. Here the land falls away sharply a hundred feet or
more to the sea and you understand why the buccaneers were forced to
attack from the landward side, though as you were scaling that toilsome
slope you wondered that any race of humans ever dared attack it at all.
[Illustration: THE TRUE NATIVE SOCIAL CENTER]
In their story of the assault on Fort Lorenzo, as indeed in the
narrative of all the doings of the buccaneers, the historians have
followed the narrative of Esquemeling, a young Dutch apothecary who
joined the sea rovers as a sort of assistant surgeon, and wrote a book
which has kept his memory alive, whatever may have been the effect of
his surgery on his patients. News of the advance of the English had
reached the Governor of Panama so that when the assailants reached the
battlefield they found the garrison reënforced until it nearly equaled
the English. So slight was the disparity in numbers that it seems
amazing that the English could have sustained the rigors of the assault.
It was, of course, impossible to attack the castle on its sea front, and
the invaders accordingly left their boats about a league from the
castle, making their way painfully through the jungle toward the place
of action. Esquemeling describes the fortification which they were to
overthrow thus:
“This castle is built upon a high mountain, at the entry of the river,
and surrounded on all sides with strong palisades, or wooden walls;
being very well terrepleined, and filled with earth; which renders them
as secure as the best walls made of stone or brick. The top of this
mountain is in a manner divided into two parts, between which lies a
ditch of the depth of thirty feet. The castle itself has but one entry,
and that by a drawbridge which passes over the ditch aforementioned. On
the land side it has four bastions, that of the sea containing only two
more. That part thereof which looks towards the South is totally
inaccessible and impossible to be climbed, through the infinite asperity
of the mountain.
“The North side is surrounded by the river, which hereabouts runs very
broad. At the foot of the said castle, or rather mountain, is seated a
strong fort, with eight great guns, which commands and impedes the entry
of the river. Not much lower are to be seen two other batteries, whereof
each hath six pieces of cannon to defend likewise the mouth of the said
river. At one side of the castle are built two great store-houses, in
which are deposited all sorts of war-like ammunition and merchandise,
which are brought hither from the inner parts of the country.
“Near these houses is a high pair of stairs, hewed out of the rock,
which serves to mount to the top of the castle. On the West side of the
said fortress lies a small port, which is not above seven or eight
fathoms deep, being very fit for small vessels and of very good
anchorage. Besides this, there lies before the castle, at the entry of
the river, a great rock, scarce to be perceived above water, unless at
low tide.”
[Illustration: _Photo, by Duperly & Son_
TROPICAL FOLIAGE ON THE CARIBBEAN]
If the English had hoped to take the garrison by surprise they were
speedily undeceived. Hardly had they emerged from the thicket into the
open space on which stands now the village of Chagres than they were
welcomed with so hot a volley of musketry and artillery from the castle
walls that many fell dead at the first fire. To assault they had to
cross a ravine, charge up a bare hillside, and pass through a ditch
thirty feet deep at the further bank of which stood the outer walls of
the fort made of timber and clay. It was two in the afternoon when the
fighting began. The assailants charged with their usual daredevil valor,
carrying fire-balls along with their swords and muskets. The Spaniards
met them with no less determination, crying out: “Come on, ye
Englishmen, enemies to God and our King; let your other companions that
are behind come too; ye shall not go to Panama this bout.”
[Illustration: ON THE UPPER CHAGRES]
[Illustration: NATIVE PANAMA WOMAN]
All the afternoon and into the night the battle raged and the assailants
might well have despaired of success except for an event which
Esquemeling thus describes:
“One of the Pirates was wounded with an arrow in his back which pierced
his body to the other side. This instantly he pulled out with great
valor at the side of his breast; then taking a little cotton that he had
about him, he wound it about the said arrow, and putting it into his
musket, he shot it back into the castle. But the cotton being kindled by
the powder occasioned two or three houses that were within the castle,
being thatched with palm leaves, to take fire, which the Spaniards
perceived not so soon as was necessary. For this fire meeting with a
parcel of powder blew it up, and hereby caused great ruin, and no less
consternation to the Spaniards, who were not able to account for this
accident, not having seen the beginning thereof.”
[Illustration: A CHARACTER OF COLON]
The fire within the fort not only disconcerted its defenders but greatly
aided the assailants, for by its flames the Spaniards could be seen
working their guns and were picked off by the English sharpshooters. The
artillery of the invaders made breaches in the walls and the debris thus
occasioned dropped into the ditch making its crossing practicable for a
storming party. Though the gallant governor of the castle threw himself
into the breach and fought with the greatest desperation, he was forced
back and into his citadel. There a musket shot pierced his brain and the
defense which was becoming a defeat became in fact a rout. Spaniards
flung themselves from the lofty cliffs upon the rocks below or into the
sea rather than trust to the mercy of their conquerors. All but thirty
of the garrison of 314 were slain, not one officer escaping, and only a
few escaped to steal up the river and through the jungle carrying to
Panama the dismal tale of the fall of its chief outpost.
Nor did the English win their triumph easily. Their force was in the
neighborhood of 400, of whom more than 100 were killed and 70 wounded. A
round shot took off both legs of Colonel Bradley and from the wound he
died a few days later. The church of the castle was turned into a
hospital, the Spaniards were made to bury their own dead, which was done
by dropping them over the cliff into the sea, and word was sent to
Morgan that the way was clear for his march upon Panama.
* * * * *
We may for a time turn aside from Buccaneer Morgan and his ravenous raid
to consider the later history of the two strongholds--Porto Bello and
San Lorenzo--which lie to the east and west of Colon. It was not the
rude shock of war which reduced them to the state of desolation and ruin
in which visitors now find them--though of such shocks they certainly
experienced enough. Morgan on his return from Panama blew up San Lorenzo
and left it a wreck, but the Spaniards rebuilt it stronger than ever
and it long continued to mount guard over the entrance to the Chagres.
So too with the forts at Porto Bello. But about 1738 one Edward Vernon,
after whom it is said Mount Vernon, the home of Washington, was named,
rose in the English parliament and declared that he could take Porto
Bello with only six ships. Parliament took him at his word, commissioned
him admiral, gave him seven ships and dispatched him on the enterprise.
Being a gentleman of spirit and a true sport, Admiral Vernon, on
approaching the Isthmus, sent one of his ships into other waters,
“disdaining to appear before Porto Bello with one ship more than he had
engaged to take it with.” Success came to him with ease. Only four of
his ships were engaged and the only considerable loss was among a
landing party which stormed the lower battery of the Iron Fort. The
Spaniards showed but little stomach for the fight, and it is worth
noting that in the recurrent affrays in the West Indies and Central
America the English whipped them with the same monotonous certainty with
which the latter had beaten the Indians. Any one desiring to draw broad
generalizations as to the comparative courage of nations is welcome to
this fact.
[Illustration: WOMAN OF THE CHAGRES REGION]
After refitting at Jamaica, Admiral Vernon, with a somewhat larger
fleet, proceeded against San Lorenzo. Again his triumph was easy, for
after a leisurely bombardment to which the Spaniards replied but
languidly, the white flag was displayed and the English entered into
possession. The warehouses in Chagres were plundered and the fort blown
up. The spluttering war between England and Spain in which these actions
occurred became known as “the war of Jenkins’ ear.” A too zealous guarda
costa lopped off the ear of a certain Captain Jenkins who, though
unknown to fame prior to that outrage, so made the welkin ring in
England, even exhibiting the mummified member from which he had been
thus rudely divorced, that Parliament was forced to declare a war in
retaliation for his ear or have its own talked off.
The buccaneers and pirates really caused the final abandonment of Porto
Bello and San Lorenzo, though not by direct attack. They made trade by
the Caribbean and along the Spanish Main so perilous that the people of
the Pacific coast found it more profitable in the long run to make the
voyage around the Horn or through the Straits of Magellan. The economics
of trade are unvarying. It seeks the cheapest before the shortest
routes, and one of the studies of our canal authorities will be to so
fix their tolls that they will not, like Morgan, L’Olonais and others,
frighten trade away from the Isthmus.
Though the forts were rebuilt to their original strength in 1751, they
never regained importance. Porto Bello disappeared when the Royal Road
to Panama lost its traffic, and the Chagres only resumed a brief
importance in 1844 when the Royal Mail Steampacket Co. made San Lorenzo
a port of call. When Colon, however, appeared as a port and the terminus
of the Panama railroad, the fate of all other ports on the Atlantic side
of the Isthmus was sealed. Left to brood over the days of their
greatness--though indeed they never repelled any serious attack--the
Iron Fort and San Lorenzo were abandoned by their Colombian garrisons
and given over to the insidious and irresistible conquest of the jungle.
Picturesque and dignified, they well repay the visit of the tourist.
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| |
| “Still standeth San Lorenzo there, |
| Aye, faithful at his post, |
| Though scoffing trees in every breeze |
| Their prime and vigor boast; |
| His garrison is but the shades |
| Of soldiers of the past, |
| But it pleaseth him, alone and grim, |
| To watch unto the last.” |
| |
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