THE SACK OF OLD PANAMA
The week after the fall of San Lorenzo, Morgan with his full force
appeared at the mouth of the Chagres River. Before leaving St. Catherine
he had dismantled the forts and burned all the houses for no particular
reason except the seemingly instinctive desire of a buccaneer to destroy
all that he could not steal. At once he began his preparations for the
ascent of the Chagres to its head of navigation, where, disembarking, he
would take the trail for Old Panama. Cruces, which was the point of
debarkation, had grown to a considerable town at this time, being the
point of transshipment of goods destined for Nombre de Dios, or Porto
Bello, from the mules that had brought them thus far, to the boats that
would float them down to tide water. The town, an inconsiderable hamlet
of thatched huts, remained in 1913, but the rise of Gatun Lake was
expected to practically blot it out of existence.
Old Panama, for which Morgan was preparing the grim experience of a
battle and a sack, had been founded in 1519 by that Pedrarias of whom we
have told as the executioner of Balboa. It had grown rapidly, built up
by the trade resulting from the invasion of Peru. At the time of
Morgan’s raid Esquemeling writes of the city:
[Illustration: NEAR A CONVENT AT OLD PANAMA]
“There belonged to this city (which is also the head of a bishopric)
eight monasteries, whereof seven were for men and one for women; two
stately churches and one hospital. The churches and monasteries were all
richly adorned with altar-pieces and paintings, huge quantity of gold
and silver, with other precious things.... Besides which ornaments, here
were to be seen two thousand houses of magnificent and prodigious
building, being all of 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.
Here were also great numbers of stables, which served for the horses and
mules, that carry all the plate, belonging as well unto the King of
Spain as to private men, towards the coast of the North Sea. The
neighboring fields belonging to this city are all cultivated and fertile
plantations, and pleasant gardens, which afford delicious prospects unto
the inhabitants the whole year long.”
Correal fixes the number of private houses as between seven and eight
thousand. The pious Thomas Gage whom we have seen haggling for rooms at
Porto Bello visited Panama about 1538 and even then credits it with five
thousand inhabitants, and at least eight cloisters of nuns and friars.
Unfortunately the good evangelist found that “the Spaniards are in this
city much given to sinne, looseness and venery,” for which reason, or
perhaps because he “feared much the heats,” he made haste to leave the
town and left us none of those graphic descriptions of which his pen was
capable.
[Illustration: CASA REALE OR KING’S HOUSE
Its heavy walls show that it was planned for defense but the Spaniards
abandoned it]
[Illustration: _Photo by Burtis & Elliott_
THE RUINED TOWER OF SAN AUGUSTINE]
The country round about Panama was then, and still is, arable and
well-fitted for grazing. The rural population was but small, more meager
indeed than one would think would have been necessary for raising
vegetables for so considerable a town. In the back country were great
numbers of Cimmaroons, or escaped slaves who are described as living in
communities, ruled over by a black king. They went naked and were armed
with bows and arrows, spears, darts and machetes. They lived on plunder
and as when captured were they killed, or, at the best, enslaved anew,
they fought with great desperation. Merchandise trains were their chief
victims, though they often raided cattle ranches, or cut off individuals
in the outskirts of the city. The English supplied them with weapons and
could always be sure of their aid against the Spaniards, who had been
their masters and whom they hated.
The harbor was wretched, useful only for small vessels which at high
tide could come straight to the seawall, being left there by the
receding tide, high and dry, so that by quick action they could be
unloaded before the waters returned. A very considerable part of the
food of the town was fish brought thither by Indians from Taboga and
nearby islands.
Such was the town which Morgan raided. Because of the colossal disaster
which befell it, a disaster without parallel since the days when the
Goths and Vandals swept down over the pleasant plains of Italy, there
has been a tendency to magnify the size, wealth and refinement of Panama
at the time of its fall. But studied calmly, with no desire to
exaggerate the qualities which made it so rich a prize, Panama may
fairly be described as a city of about 30,000 people, with massive
churches, convents and official buildings of masonry, with many stately
houses of the type esteemed luxurious in the tropics, and peopled
largely by pure-blooded Spaniards of the better type. It was too early
a date for the amalgamation of races now so much in evidence on the
Isthmus to have proceeded far, and the ancient records show that the
Spaniards of substance in the town had mainly come thither from Seville.
Morgan started up the river from San Lorenzo, where he left 500 men to
serve as a garrison, on the 18th of January, 1761. His force comprised
1200 men in five boats with artillery and thirty-two canoes. The raiders
planned to live on the country and hence took small store of
provisions--an error which nearly wrecked the expedition. The first day
they covered about eighteen miles. This was by nature made the easiest
part of their journey, for this stretch of the Chagres is deep, with but
a slow current and much of the way they may have been aided by the
incoming tide. If the chronicler who fixed their distance covered at
eighteen miles was correct, they must have pitched their camp the first
night not very far from where Gatun Dam now rears its mighty bulk across
the valley and makes of the Chagres a broad lake. Their troubles however
came with their first nightfall. Leaving their boats and scattering
about the surrounding country they found that the Spaniards had raked it
clean of provisions of every sort. The Indian villages were either
smoking ruins or clusters of empty huts, the cattle ranches were bare of
cattle, and even the banana and yam patches were stripped. By noon on
the second day, according to Esquemeling, “they were compelled to leave
their boats and canoes by reason the river was very dry for want of
rain, and the many trees that were fallen into it.” Henceforth at that
point the Chagres River transformed into a lake will be in the
neighborhood of forty feet deep the year round. Apparently, however, the
abandonment of the boats was only partial, the main body of troops
marching through the woods while others waded, pushing the boats over
the shallows as is done today. The advance was continued in this
fashion, partly by water and partly through the jungle, all with the
greatest difficulty, at a snail’s pace and on stomachs daily growing
emptier. Twice they came upon signs that the Spaniards had prepared an
ambuscade for them, but becoming faint-hearted had fled. Thereat the
buccaneers grumbled mightily. They were better at fighting than at
chopping paths through the jungle, and were so hungry that if they had
slain a few Spaniards they would quite probably have cooked and eaten
them. For six days they struggled with the jungle without finding any
food whatsoever, then they discovered a granary stored with maize which
they ate exultingly. Leather scraps became a much prized article of
food, just as in a very different climate Greely’s men in the Arctic
circle kept alive on shreds cut from their sealskin boots. Of leather as
an article of diet Esquemeling writes:
[Illustration: WAYSIDE SHRINE ON THE SAVANNA ROAD]
“Here again he was happy, that had reserved since noon any small piece
of leather whereof to make his supper, drinking after it a good draught
of water for his greatest comfort. Some persons, who never were out of
their mothers’ kitchens, may ask how these pirates could eat, swallow
and digest those pieces of leather, so hard and dry. To whom I only
answer: That could they once experiment what hunger, or rather famine,
is, they would certainly find the manner, by their own necessity, as the
pirates did. For these first took the leather and sliced it in pieces.
Then did they beat it between two stones, and rub it, often dipping it
in the water of the river to render it by these means supple and tender.
Lastly they scraped off the hair, and roasted or broiled it upon the
fire. And, being thus cooked, they cut it into small morsels, and eat
it, helping it down with frequent gulps of water, which by good fortune
they had near at hand.”
Once only did they meet with any resistance; that was near Cruces where
several hundred Indians ambushed them in the jungle, and while avoiding
any direct combat, killed several with arrows. As the Indians fled they
cried out in Spanish, “Ho, ye dogs! Go to the savanna; to the savanna,”
from which, as from like warnings uttered by stragglers, the invaders
concluded that battle was to be given them on the broad plain before the
city.
It had taken six days for the expedition to reach Cruces--a trip which
could readily be made today by train to Gamboa and thence by cayuca in
five or six hours. Arrived there they prepared for the last stage of the
journey, for there they finally left their boats and took up the Royal
Road. Cruces is eight miles from Panama, and at the moment of Morgan’s
descent upon it, was at the period of its greatest prosperity. Of its
rise to greatness and its final disappearance under the rising waters of
Gatun Lake I shall have more to say in the chapter concerning the
Chagres River. The English found the frame houses already ablaze, and
the larders swept clean, the Spaniards having followed their invariable
custom of leaving no food for the invaders. Some wretched dogs and cats
which hung about the deserted dwellings were killed and eaten, and in
the storehouses a number of jars of wine were found, upon drinking which
the buccaneers became deathly sick. They claimed it was poisoned, but
more probably their stomachs, which had been struggling to digest
leather scraps, were in no condition for the strong wines of the
tropics.
From this point onward the invaders saw many of their enemies, but the
Indians only offered active resistance, firing upon the advancing column
from ambuscades, and at one or two made a determined stand. As the
invaders were strung out in single file along a narrow road (Esquemeling
complains that only ten or twelve men could walk in a file) it would
have been easy to so impede their progress, and harass them with attacks
from the bush, as to defeat their purpose wholly. For it is to be
remembered that the English were almost starved, footsore and weary,
dragging cannon along the rocky roads and bearing heavy equipment under
the scorching sun. But the Spaniards contented themselves with shouting
defiance and daring the invaders to meet them “a la savanna.” At the
first danger of a fight they ran away.
Gaining on the ninth day of their march the top of a hill, still known
as “El Cerro de los Buccaneeros” (The Hill of the Buccaneers), the
pirates had the joy of seeing for the first time the Pacific, and thus
knowing that Panama must be at hand. Upon the plain below they came upon
a great body of cattle. Some historians say that the Spaniards had
gathered a great herd of savage bulls to be driven upon the English
lines in expectation of putting them to rout. The tradition seems
doubtful, and to any one who has seen the mild and docile bulls of the
Panama savannas it is merely ridiculous. However the cattle came there
it was an ill chance for the Spaniards, for they furnished the hearty
food necessary to put fight again into the famished bodies of the
buccaneers. Esquemeling’s description of the banquet on the plains is
hardly appetizing:
[Illustration: ARCHED BRIDGE AT OLD PANAMA, ALMOST 400 YEARS OLD
There was no Horatius to hold this strait path against the invaders]
“Here while some were employed in killing and flaying cows, horses,
bulls and chiefly asses, of which there was greatest number, others
busied themselves in kindling of fires and getting wood wherewith to
roast them. Thus cutting the flesh of these animals into pieces, or
gobbets, they threw them into the fire, and half carbonadoed or roasted,
they devoured them with incredible haste and appetite. For such was
their hunger that they more resembled cannibals than Europeans at this
banquet, the blood many times running down from their beards to the
middle of their bodies.”
Gorged to their gullets, the cutthroats lay down to rest. Morgan had a
sharp watch kept, and sounded at least one false alarm that the men
might not sleep too securely. But the Spaniards on the eve of their
crushing disaster left their foes to rest in peace except for a noisy
cannonade which did no damage, and shouts of “Corros! Nos
Veremos”--“Dogs! We will see you again,” which they certainly did,
finding the meeting most unpleasant.
On the morrow, the tenth day after leaving San Lorenzo, and either the
18th or 27th of January, 1671, for contemporary writers differ about the
date, the attack on the city began. The buccaneers disappointed the
Spanish at the very outset by not taking the road which lay plain and
open to them and which was well commanded by the Spanish batteries and
ambuscades, but came upon them through the woods. This violation of the
rules of the game embarrassed the Spaniards from the very first.
[Illustration: _Photo by Prof. Otto Lutz_
FOLIAGE ON THE CANAL ZONE]
But even so, they had every advantage on their side--except courage.
They largely outnumbered the assailants, though the estimate of the
hostile generals differ greatly, as they always have in history. We must
reasonably suppose that in a battle on the issue of which directly
depended their lives, the lives and honor of their womenfolk, their
homes, their fortunes, their liberty and the continued existence of
their city the people of Panama would have turned out to a man. Yet the
President of Panama reported to the Spanish court that he had but 1200
men, mostly negroes, mulattoes and Indians, armed with fowling pieces
and his only artillery three wooden cannon bound with rawhide. Dr. C. L.
G. Anderson, to whose painstaking study of the old Spanish chroniclers
all present-day students of Panama history must be largely indebted,
says, and reasonably, “The Spanish army was made up not merely of
merchants, planters and servants, but contained besides many regular
troops; veterans of the wars in Flanders, Sicily and other countries of
Europe.” Whatever the precise figures may have been there is no question
that the assailants were largely outnumbered by the defenders who,
fighting for wives, and children, homes and firesides, might have been
expected to show desperate valor. Instead of which the buccaneers put
the Spaniards to rout in two hours’ fighting on the plain to which the
pirates had been so scornfully invited.
[Illustration: THE CHAGRES ABOVE SAN LORENZO]
The Spanish plan of battle savored largely of the theatrical. As the
circus opens its performance with a grand entry of mounted performers,
so the Spaniards ushered in the fight with a grand charge of cavalry.
Admirable cavalrymen, they are said to have been, well mounted on
trained cattle ponies and in all about 400 strong. Unhappily there
appeared to have been no preliminary study of the English position, and
a morass impenetrable by horsemen guarded its flanks. Only in front
could the English line be reached and there the trained marksmen of the
buccaneers, or cattle hunters, dropping on one knee, picked off the
Spanish horsemen before they could close. The cavalry hardly reached the
buccaneers’ first line though they charged twice with the utmost
gallantry. An infantry charge that followed was beaten back with like
slaughter. Seeing this the Spaniards are said to have resorted to a
device as ridiculous in its outcome as it was in its conception. This
was the driving against the buccaneers’ lines of a herd of a thousand
bulls driven by fifty vaqueros. With great shouting and cracking of
whips the herd was urged against the invaders. But the Central American
bull as a ferocious beast is a disappointment--which perhaps explains
the placidity with which Panama agreed to the request of the United
States that it abolish bull fighting. If not vicious, however, they can
be obstinate, and about as many bulls charged into the already shattered
Spanish lines as upon the buccaneers. Morgan showed quick wit by
ordering his men to let the bulls pass, but kill the vaqueros, and so,
with the exception of a few bovines who lingered to rend the British
flags, being enraged by their scarlet hue, the greater part of the herd
trotted off to a quieter part of the savanna where they might placidly
graze while the foolish men who had sought to drag them into the quarrel
went on killing each other. This virtually ended the Spanish defense.
After another charge the defenders of the city gave up any effort at
organized opposition to the invaders and fled into the city, or to the
shelter of the neighboring jungle. The English, exhausted with their
long march and the shock of the battle, did not immediately follow up
their advantage but rested for some hours. There is much conflict of
authority on the question of loss in the battle. Morgan claimed to have
lost only five men killed and ten wounded, and fixed the Spanish loss at
about 400. Esquemeling says there were 600 Spaniards dead upon the
field beside the wounded and prisoners. Whatever the comparative losses
the Spanish defeat was decisive, nor did the survivors regain sufficient
morale to offer any effective opposition to the buccaneers as they moved
upon the city.
[Illustration: IN THE CRYPT OF OLD SAN AUGUSTINE]
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF OLD PANAMA]
One would think that the final defense would have been dogged and
desperate in the extreme. The Spaniards knew what to expect in the way
of murder, rapine, plunder and enslavement. They had the story of Porto
Bello fresh in their memories, and, for that matter, they had enjoyed
such fruits of victory themselves too often to hug the delusion that
these victors would forego them. Nor even after the decisive thrashing
they had sustained on the plain need they have despaired. On three sides
Panama was defended by the sea and its inlets, and on the fourth could
only be approached along a single road and over an arched bridge, the
sturdy masonry of which still stands, and forms a favorite background
for photographic groups of tourists. Though not walled, as was its
successor, Old Panama had a great plenty of heavy masonry buildings, the
ruins of which show them to have been constructed with a view to
defense. The churches, the eight convents, the official buildings and
many of the private residences were built of stone with heavy barred
windows and, if stoutly defended in conjunction with barricades in the
streets, might well have balked the invaders of their prey. But the
Spanish spirit seemed crushed by the defeat of their choice cavalry on
the savanna, and three hours sufficed for the English to make themselves
masters of the whole city. During the fighting flames broke out in
several quarters of the town, some think set purposely by the
assailants, which was denied by Morgan. However caused, the fires raged
for days, were still smoldering when the buccaneers left three weeks
later, and consumed nearly all except the masonry edifices in the city.
Imagination balks at the effort to conceive the wretched plight of the
30,000 people of this city, subjected for three weeks to the cruelty,
cupidity and lust of the “experienced and ancient pyrates” and the
cutthroats of all nationalities that made up the command of Morgan.
Little more than a thousand of the raiders could have remained alive,
but all the fighting men of the city were slain, wounded or cowed into
unmanly subjection. After the first riotous orgy of drunkenness and
rapine--though indeed Morgan shrewdly strove to keep his men sober by
spreading the report that all the wine had been poisoned--the business
of looting was taken up seriously. First the churches and government
houses had to be ransacked for precious ornaments and treasure, and
herein the robbers met with their first serious disappointment, for on
the news of their coming much of the plate had been put on ships and
sent out to sea. A brig aground in the harbor was seized by Morgan and
sent in pursuit, but the delights of the Island of Taboga, then as now a
pleasure resort, proved superior even to the avariciousness of the
Spaniards, and they lingered there over wine cups until the treasure
ships had vanished. Rumors still linger that much of the treasure had
been buried at Taboga, and that one richly freighted ship had been sunk
some place nearby. But frequent treasure-hunting expeditions have come
home empty handed.
[Illustration: WASH DAY AT TABOGA]
After raking the government buildings from garret to vaults the pirates
turned to the private houses. From ceremonial plate to the seamstress’s
thimble; from the glittering necklace to the wedding ring, everything
was raked together into the great common store of plunder. What was
easily found was not enough. Wells were searched, floors torn up, walls
ripped open and, after all other devices had been employed, prisoners
were put to the torture to make them reveal the hiding places of their
own and others’ valuables. Capt. Morgan led in this activity, as indeed
he appears to have been the most villainous of all his crew in the
mistreatment of women. After all that could be gathered by these devices
had been taken the several thousand prisoners were informed that if they
wanted to retain their lives and regain their liberty they must pay
ransom, fixed in amount according to the standing in the community and
the wealth of the captive. Of course the community was gone and the
buccaneers had taken all of the wealth, but the luckless prisoner was
expected to pay nevertheless and a surprising number of them did so.
With all these expedients for the extraction of wealth from a subjugated
town, the buccaneers were fain to be satisfied, and, weak from wounds
and revelry, according to Esquemeling:
[Illustration: A STREET IN CRUCES]
“On the 24th of February, of the year 1761, Captain Morgan departed from
the city of Panama, or rather from the place where the city of Panama
did stand. Of the spoils whereof he carried with him one hundred and
seventy-five beasts of carriage, laden with silver, gold and other
precious things, besides 600 prisoners more or less, between women,
children and slaves.”
[Illustration: BREAKING WAVES AT OLD PANAMA]
[Illustration: OLD BELL AT REMEDIOS, 1682]
So they plodded back to San Lorenzo whence they had started on their
piratical expedition. It affords a striking illustration of the strictly
business methods of these pirates that before reaching the castle Morgan
ordered a halt, and had every man searched for valuables, submitting
himself to the inquisition. So thorough was the search that even the
guns were shaken, upside down, lest precious stones might be concealed
in their barrels. However the buccaneers came to jeer at Morgan’s
apparent fairness in being searched with the rest, and putting his
personal pilferings into the common lot as a piece of duplicity. For the
loot of the Panama expedition has been reckoned at several millions of
dollars, and indeed a town of that size, famous for wealth and at a
period when the amassing of gold and jewels was a passion, should
certainly have produced that much. But when it came to the vital
operation of dividing the spoils the ordinary fighting men found that
for their four months’ campaign, they received about $100 apiece. “Which
small sum,” says the literary apothecary Esquemeling, who was “buncoed”
with the rest, “they thought too little reward for so much labor and
such huge and manifest dangers they had so often exposed their lives
unto. But Captain Morgan was deaf to all these and many other complaints
of this kind, having designed in his mind to cheat them of as much as he
could.”
Henry Morgan was indeed a practical pirate, who, had he but lived four
hundred years later, could have made vastly more money out of a town of
30,000 people by the mild devices of franchises and bonds, than he did
out of Panama with murder, the rack, robbery and rapine for his methods.
After setting the example of loyally putting his all into the common
store, he assumed the duty of dividing that store. This accomplished to
his liking, and knowing that idleness breeds discontent, and that
discontent is always hurtful to capital, he set his men to work pulling
the Castle of San Lorenzo to pieces. While they were thus engaged, one
dark night with favoring winds he hove anchor and with four ships,
filled with his English favorites, and laden with the lion’s share of
the booty, he sailed away from Chagres and from buccaneering forever. He
left behind all the French, Dutch and mongrel pirates--those ancient and
experienced ones. He left them some of the poorer ships--much as an
efficient gang of street railway looters leave some rusty rails and
decrepit cars to a town they have looted--but saw to it that none was
left that could possibly catch up with his fleet.
So the deserted buccaneers first fought awhile among themselves, then
dispersed. Some in an amateurish way sacked the town of Keys in Cuba.
Others went to Campeche and Honduras. Esquemeling with a small band went
up to Bocadel Toro, now the Panama headquarters of the United Fruit
Company, whence he made his way back to Europe. There he wrote his
“History of the Buccaneers,” which became one of the world’s “best
sellers,” and in which he gave his Captain Morgan “the worst of it”--a
species of satisfaction which is often the only recourse of the literary
man who gets tangled up with Big Business.
[Illustration: THE BEETLING CLIFFS OF THE UPPER CHAGRES]
As for Captain Morgan, he was made much of at Jamaica, where the crown’s
share of the proceeds of his piracy was cheerfully accepted by the
governor. But in England there was some embarrassment, for there was no
war with Spain and the complete destruction of a Spanish city by a force
bearing British flags was at least embarrassing. So by way of showing
its repentance and good intent the government announced its purpose to
suppress buccaneering and all piracy, and to that end created Henry
Morgan a baronet and put the commission in his hands--much as we have
been accustomed to put politicians on our civil service commissions, and
protected manufacturers on our tariff boards. So as _Sir_ Henry Morgan
this most wholesale robber and murderer Central America ever knew ended
his days in high respectability.
[Illustration: THE ROOTS REACH DOWN SEEKING FOR SOIL]
While the ruins of Old Panama compare but unfavorably with those of
Porto Bello or San Lorenzo, their proximity to the city of Panama make
them a favorite point of interest for tourists. Half a day is ample to
give to the drive out and back and to the inspection of the ruins
themselves. The extended area over which they are scattered testifies to
the size of the obliterated city, while the wide spaces, destitute of
any sign of occupation, which intervene between the remaining relics,
shows clearly that the greater part of the town must have been built of
perishable materials easily swept away at the time of the fire, or
slowly disintegrating during the flood of years that have since rolled
by. The tower of the Cathedral of St. Augustine alone among the relics
still remaining affords any suggestion of grandeur or even of
architectural dignity.
To reach the ruins you take a horse, a carriage or an automobile for a
ride of about five miles over an excellent road laid and maintained by
the Republic of Panama. If you go by horseback the old trail which the
pirates used is still traceable and at low tide one can ride along the
beach. For the majority the drive along the road, which should be taken
in the early morning, is the simpler way, though there was promise in
1913 that within a few months a trolley line would still further
simplify the trip.
From Balboa, the Pacific opening of the Panama Canal, and the newest of
the world’s great ports, to the ruins of Old Panama, founded in 1609 and
obliterated by pirates in 1671, by trolley in two hours! Was ever the
past more audaciously linked to the present? Were ever exhibits of the
peaceful commerce of today and the bloody raids of ancient times placed
in such dramatic juxtaposition?
The road to Old Panama runs through a peaceful grazing country, with a
very few plantations. One or two country residences of prosperous
Panamanians appear standing well back from the road, but signs of life
and of industry are few. The country lies high, is open and free from
jungle and in almost any North American state, lying thus close to a
town of 40,000 people and adjacent to a district in which the United
States is spending some millions of dollars a month, would be platted in
additions for miles around, and dotted with the signs of real estate
dealers. But the Panamanian mind is not speculative, or at any rate
soars little above the weekly lottery ticket. So all Uncle Samuel’s
disbursements in the Zone have thus far produced nothing remotely
resembling a real estate boom.
However as we turn off from the main road toward the sea and the square
broken tower of the old cathedral, or Church of St. Augustine, with the
ferns springing from the jagged top, and vines twisting out through the
dumbly staring windows, real estate and “booms” seem singularly ignoble
topics in the presence of this mute spectator of the agonies of a
martyred people. For even the dulling mists of the interposing
centuries, even our feeling that the Spaniards suffered only the anguish
and the torments which they had themselves meted out to the real owners
of the lands they had seized upon, cannot wholly blunt the sense of pity
for the women and children, for the husbands and fathers in the city
which fell under Morgan’s blight. It would be no easy task to gather in
the worst purlieus of any American city today a band so wholly lost to
shame, to pity and to God as the ruffians who followed Morgan. What they
did to the people on whom their hands reeking with blood were laid must
be left to the imagination. The only contemporary record of the sack was
written by one of their own number to whom apparently such scenes had
become commonplace, for while his gorge rises at the contemplation of
his own hard fortune in being robbed and deserted by his chief, he
recounts the torture of men and the violation of women in a
matter-of-fact way as though all in the day’s work.
[Illustration: BLUFF NEAR TORO POINT
Photographing this scene is now prohibited as a United States fort is to
be erected here]
Driving on we come to the arched bridge which formed the main entrance
to the town in the day of its downfall. Sturdy it is still, though the
public road no longer passes over it, defying the assaults of time and
the more disintegrating inroads of the tropical plants which insinuate
themselves into every crevice, prying the stone apart with tender
fingers ever hardening. At once the bridge, none too wide for three to
cross abreast, awakens wonder that no Horatius was in all the Spanish
armies to keep the bridge as did he of ancient Rome. But after all the
rivulet which today makes its sluggish way under the arch is no Tiber to
hold the invading army at bay. Perhaps it was bigger in Morgan’s time;
today it would be easily forded, almost leapt. At any rate no
“Dauntless Three” like those Macaulay sung were there to stay the
onrolling tide of foemen.
[Illustration: “WHETHER THE TREE OR THE WALL IS STOUTER IS A PROBLEM”]
Hardly have we passed the bridge than a massive vine-embedded ruin on
the left of the road stands mute evidence that the Spaniards had forts,
if they had but possessed the courage to defend them. This is the Casa
Reale, or government house. Its walls of rubble masonry are full two
feet thick and have the appearance of having been pierced for musketry.
If the buccaneers had any artillery at all, which is doubtful, it was
hardly heavy enough to have had any effect against such a wall. Secure
within the Casa Reale such a handful of men as held the Alamo against
the Mexicans could have resisted Morgan’s men indefinitely. But the
spirit was lacking. The stout walls of the Casa Reale stand now as
evidences of the character of the defenses the people of Panama had if
they but had the pluck to use them.
Continuing toward the sea the visitor next comes upon the ruins of the
Cathedral, which are in so shattered a state as to justify the belief
that either the invaders or the Spaniards themselves employed gunpowder
to wreck so massive an edifice. The flames and the work of the
vegetation could hardly have accomplished such complete destruction. The
tower alone retains definite form, rising about fifty feet from a dense
jungle, and lined within with vines and clinging trees that use the
ancient walls as a support and hasten their disintegration in so doing.
It is difficult even to trace the lines of the great church, so
thoroughly have its walls been demolished. Some of the massive arches
still stand all pendulous with vines.
At the water’s edge one still finds steps leading down into the sea, and
the remains of the old paved road to which at high tide the boats could
come with their cargoes of fish and country produce. If one happens to
visit the spot at low tide the view looking seaward is as ugly as could
well be imagined. The hard sand beach extends only to high water mark.
Beyond that for more than a mile seaward extends a dismal range of black
mud of about the consistency of putty. Near the shore it is seen to be
full of round holes from which crawl unsightly worms and small crabs. E.
C. Stedman puts its unsightly appearance in two lines:
“The tide still ebbs a league from quay,
The buzzards scour the empty bay.”
Along the strand still stand fragments of the old seawall, and at a
considerable distance from the Cathedral ruins you come upon another
large building of which little more than the lower walls and the
subterranean vaults still have form and coherence. The dungeon into
which visitors usually make their way is peculiarly dark, damp and
dismal, and the general air of ghoulishness is mightily enhanced by the
myriads of bats that hang from the ceiling and whirl and whiz away when
intruders light matches to study the moldering masonry. A most
interesting feature of this crypt is the great roots of the trees and
shrubs that sprung from seeds that had fallen into some crevice and
found there soil enough to germinate, but not sufficient to support life
as the plant grew larger. The roots twist and creep along the walls,
reaching out for earth below as unerringly as a giant boa creeps
sinuously through the jungle.