THE CITY OF PANAMA.
For an American not too much spoiled with foreign travel the city of
Panama is a most entertaining stopping place for a week or more. In what
its charm consists it is hard to say. Foreign it is, of course, a
complete change from anything within the borders, or for that matter
close to the bounds of the United States. But it is not so thorough a
specimen of Latin-American city building as Cartagena, its neighbor. Its
architecture is admittedly commonplace, the Cathedral itself being
interesting mainly because of its antiquity--and it would be modern in
old Spain. The Latin gaiety of its people breaks out in merry riot at
carnival time, but it is equally riotous in every town of Central
America. Withal there is a something about Panama that has an abiding
novelty. Perhaps it is the tang of the tropics added to the flavor of
antiquity. Anyhow the tourist who abides in the intensely modern and
purely United States hotel, the Tivoli, has but to give a dime to a
Panama hackman to be transported into an atmosphere as foreign as though
he had suddenly been wafted to Madrid.
Latter-day tourists complain that the sanitary efforts of the Isthmian
Commission have robbed Panama of something of its picturesqueness. They
deplore the loss of the streets that were too sticky for the passage of
Venetian gondolas, but entirely too liquid for ordinary means of
locomotion. They grieve over the disappearance of the public roulette
wheels and the monotonous cry of the numbers at keno. They complain that
the population has taken to the practice of wearing an inordinate
quantity of clothes instead of being content with barely enough to pique
curiosity concerning the few charms concealed. But though the city has
been remarkably purified there is still enough of physical dirt apparent
to displease the most fastidious, and quite sufficient moral
uncleanliness if one seeks for it, as in other towns.
[Illustration: PANAMA BAY FROM ANCON HILL]
[Illustration: SANTA ANA PLAZA
The fence is now removed. During the French days this Plaza was the
scene of much gaiety and still shows French influence]
The entrance by railway to Panama is not prepossessing, but for that
matter I know of few cities in which it is. Rome and Genoa perhaps excel
in offering a fine front to the visitor. But in Panama when you emerge
from the station after a journey clear across the continent, which has
taken you about three hours, you are confronted by a sort of ragged
triangular plaza. In the distance on a hill to your right is set the
Tivoli Hotel looking cool and inviting with its broad piazzas and dress
of green and white. To your left is a new native hotel, the
International, as different from the Tivoli as imaginable, built of
rubble masonry covered with concrete stucco, with rooms twice as high as
those of the usual American building. It looks cool too, in a way, and
its most striking feature is a pleasingly commodious bar, with wide open
unscreened doors on the level of the sidewalk. The Tivoli Hotel, being
owned and managed by the United States government, has no bar. This
statement is made in no spirit of invidious comparison, but merely as a
matter of helpful information to the arriving traveler undecided which
hotel to choose.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
PANAMA FROM THE SEA WALL; CATHEDRAL TOWERS IN DISTANCE]
The plaza is filled with Panama cabs--small open victorias, drawn by
stunted wiry horses like our cow ponies and driven by Panama negroes who
either do not speak English, or, in many cases, pretend not to in order
to save themselves the trouble of explaining any of the sights to their
fares. There is none of the bustle that attends the arrival of a train
in an American city. No raucous cries of “Keb, sir? Keb”! no
ingratiating eagerness to seize upon your baggage, no ready proffer of
willingness to take you anywhere. If the Panama cabby shows any interest
at all in getting a fare out of an arriving crowd it seems to be in
evading the one who beckons him, and trying to capture someone else. One
reason perhaps for the lethargy of these sable jehus is that the
government has robbed their calling of its sporting feature by fixing
their fare at ten cents to any place in town. Opportunity to rob a fare
is almost wholly denied them, hence their dejected air as compared with
the alert piratical demeanor of the buccaneers who kidnap passengers at
the railway stations of our own enlightened land. The only way the
Panama driver can get the best of the passenger is by construing each
stop as the end of a trip, and the order to drive on as constituting a
new engagement involving an additional dime. Tourists who jovially drew
up to the curbstone to greet acquaintances met _en route_ several times
in a half-hour’s ride are said to have been mulcted of a surprising
number of dimes, but in justice to the Panama hackman--who really
doesn’t have the air of rioting in ill-gotten wealth--I must say that I
never encountered an instance of this overcharge.
Your first introduction to the beauty of Panama architecture comes from
a building that fronts you as you leave your train. Three stories high
it has the massive strength of a confectioner’s creations, and is
tastefully colored a sickly green, relieved by stripes of salmon pink,
with occasional interludes of garnet and old gold. The fact that it
houses a saloon, the proportions of which would be generous on the
Bowery or South Clark Street, does not explain this brilliant color
scheme. It is merely the expression of the local color sense, and is
quite likely to be employed to lend distinction to a convent school or a
fashionable club indiscriminately.
From the Railway Plaza--originality has not yet furnished a more
attractive name--the Avenida Centrale stretches away in a generally
southerly direction to the seawall at the city’s end. What Broadway is
to New York, the Corso to Rome, or Main Street to Podunk, this street is
to Panama. It is narrow and in time will be exceedingly crowded, for
the rails of a trolley line are laid on one side, and some time in the
leisurely Panamanian future the cars will run through the old town and
so on out to Balboa where the Americans are building the great docks at
the entrance to the Canal. Just now however it is chiefly crowded with
the light open carriages which toward eventide carry up and down the
thoroughfare olive-complexioned gentlemen who look smilingly at the
balconies on either side whence fair ones--of varying degrees of
fairness with a tendency toward the rich shade of mahogany--look down
approvingly.
[Illustration: THE BULL RING; BULL FIGHTS ARE NOW PROHIBITED]
[Illustration: THE PANAMA WATER FRONT]
Panama is an old city, as American cities run, for it was founded in
1673 when the Bishop marked with a cross the place for the Cathedral.
The Bishop still plays a notable part in the life of the town, for it is
to his palace in Cathedral Plaza that you repair Sunday mornings to hear
the lucky number in the lottery announced. This curious partnership
between the church and the great gambling game does not seem to shock or
even perplex the Panamanians, and as the State turns over to the church
a very considerable percentage of the lottery’s profits it is perhaps
only fair for the Bishop to be thus hospitable. If you jeer a
well-informed Panamanian on the relations of his church to the lottery
he counters by asking suavely about the filthy tenement houses owned by
Old Trinity in New York. As a vested right under the Colombian
government the lottery will continue until 1918, then expire under the
clause in the Panama constitution which prohibits gambling. Drawings are
held each Sunday. Ten thousand tickets are issued at a price of $2.50
each, though the custom is to buy one-fifth of a ticket at a time. The
capital prize is $7500 with lesser prizes of various sums down to one
dollar. The Americans on the Zone buy eagerly, but I could not learn of
any one who had captured a considerable prize. One official who
systematically set aside $5 a week for tickets told me that, after four
years’ playing, he was several hundred dollars ahead “beside the fun”.
[Illustration: THE LOTTERY OFFICE IN THE BISHOP’S PALACE]
Though old historically, Panama is modern architecturally. It was
repeatedly swept by fires even before the era of overfumigation by the
Canal builders. Five fires considerable enough to be called “great” are
recorded. Most of the churches have been burned at least once and the
façade of the Cathedral was overthrown by an earthquake. The San Domingo
Church, the Church and Convent of San Francisco, and the Jesuit Church
still stand in ruins. In Italy or England these ruins would be cared
for, clothed by pious, or perhaps practical, hands with a certain sort
of dignity. Not so in Panama. The San Domingo Church, much visited by
tourists because of its curious flat arch, long housed a cobbler’s bench
and a booth for curios. Now its owner is utilizing such portions of the
ruin as are still stable as part of a tenement house he is building.
When reproached for thus obliterating an historic relic he blandly
offered to leave it in its former state, provided he were paid a rental
equal to that the tenement would bring in. There being no society for
the preservation of historic places in Panama his offer went unheeded,
and the church is fast being built into the walls of a flat-house. As
for the Church of the Jesuits its floor is gone, and cows and horses are
stabled in the sanctuary of its apse.
[Illustration: SAN DOMINGO CHURCH AND THE FLAT ARCH]
The streets of Panama look older than they really are. The more
substantial buildings are of rubble masonry faced with cement which
quickly takes on an appearance of age. Avenida Centrale is lined for all
but a quarter of a mile of its length with shops, over which as a rule
the merchant’s family lives--for the Panamanians, like other Latins,
have not yet acquired the New York idea that it is vulgar to live over
your own place of business but perfectly proper to live two miles or
more away over someone else’s drug store, grocery, stationery store, or
what not. There might be an essay written on the precise sort of a
business place above which it is correct for an American to live. Of
course the nature of the entrance counts, and much propriety is saved if
it be on the side front thus genteelly concealing from guests that there
are any shops in the building at all. These considerations however are
not important in Panama, and many of the best apartments are reached
through dismal doors and up winding stairways which seldom show signs of
any squeamishness on the part of the domestics, or intrusive activity by
the sanitary officers.
[Illustration: _Photo by F. A Gause_
CHIRIQUI CATTLE AT THE ABATTOIR]
Often, however, the apartments reached by such uninviting gateways are
charming. The rooms are always big, equivalent each to about three rooms
of our typical city flat. Great French windows open to the floor, and
give upon broad verandas, from which the life of the street below may be
observed--incidentally letting in the street noises which are many and
varied. The tendency is to the minimum of furniture, and that light, so
as to admit easy shifting to the breeziest spots. To our northern eyes
the adjective “bare” would generally apply to these homes, but their
furnishings are adapted to the climate and to the habits of people
living largely out of doors. Rents are high for a town of 35,000 people.
A five-room flat in a fairly good neighborhood will rent for from $60 to
$75 gold a month, and as the construction is of the simplest and the
landlord furnishes neither heat nor janitor service, it seems a heavy
return on the capital invested.
[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE; A FINE TYPE OF PANAMA RESIDENCE]
It seemed to me, as the result of questioning and observation rather
than by any personal experience, that living expenses in Panama City
must be high, and good living according to our North American ideas
impossible. What the visitor finds in the homes of the people on the
Canal Zone offers no guide to the conditions existing in the native
town. For the Zone dwellers have the commissary to buy from, and that
draws from all the markets of the world, and is particularly efficient
in buying meats, which it gets from our own Beef Trust and sells for
about half of what the market man in Chicago or New York exacts. But the
native Panamanian has no such source of supply. His meats are mainly
native animals fresh killed, and if you have a taste for sanguinary
sights you may see at early dawn every morning numbers of cattle and
hogs slaughtered in a trim and cleanly open air abattoir which the
Panamanians owe to the Canal authorities. However the climate tends to
encourage a fish and vegetable diet, and the supplies of these staples
are fairly good. The family buying is done at a central market which it
is well worth the tourists’ time to visit.
[Illustration: _Photo by Gause_
THE FISH MARKET]
Every day is market day at Panama, but the crowded little open-air mart
is seen at its best of a Saturday or Sunday in the early morning. All
night long the native boats, mostly cayucas hewn out of a single log and
often as much as 35 feet long, and with a schooner rig, have been
drifting in, propelled by the never-failing trade wind. They come from
the Bayano River country, from Chorrera, from Taboga and the Isles of
Pearls, from the Bay of San Miguel and from the land of the San Blas
Indians. Great sailors these latter, veritable vikings of the tropics,
driving their cayucas through shrieking gales when the ocean steamers
find it prudent to stay in port.
[Illustration: SAN BLAS BOATS AT THE MARKET PLACE]
Nature helps the primitive people of the jungle to bring their goods to
the waiting purchasers. The breeze is constant, seldom growing to a
gale, and the tide rising full 20 feet enables them to run their boats
at high tide close to the market causeway, and when the tide retires
land their products over the flats without the trouble of lighterage.
True the bottom is of mud and stones, but the soles of the seamen are
not tender, nor are they squeamish as to the nature of the soil on which
they tread.
[Illustration: _Photo by Gause_
THE VEGETABLE MARKET]
The market is open at dawn, and the buyers are there almost as soon as
the sellers, for early rising is the rule in the tropics. Along the
sidewalks, on the curbs, in the muddy roadway even, the diverse fruits
and food products of the country are spread forth to tempt the robust
appetites of those gathered about. Here is an Indian woman, the color of
a cocoanut, and crinkled as to skin like a piece of Chinese crepe.
Before her is spread out her stock, diverse and in some items curious.
Green peppers, tomatoes a little larger than a small plum, a cheese
made of goat’s milk and packed to about the consistency of Brie; a few
yams, peas, limes and a papaya or two are the more familiar edibles.
Something shaped like a banana and wrapped in corn husks arouses my
curiosity.
[Illustration: THE MARKET ON THE CURB]
[Illustration: WHERE THE FLIES GET BUSY]
“What is it”? “Five cents”. “No, no! I mean what is it? What’s it made
of”? “Fi centavo”!
In despair over my lack of Indo-Spanish patois, I buy it and find a
little native sugar, very moist and very dark, made up like a sausage,
or a tamale in corn husks. Other mysterious objects turn out to be
ginseng, which appeals to the resident Chinese; the mamei, a curious
pulpy fruit the size of a large peach, with a skin like chamois and a
fleshly looking pit about the size of a peach-stone; the sapodilla, a
plum colored fruit with a mushy interior, which when cut transversely
shows a star-like marking and is sometimes called the star apple. It is
eaten with a spoon and is palatable. The mamei, however, like the mango,
requires a specially trained taste.
[Illustration: CAYUCAS ON MARKET DAY]
While puzzling over the native fruits a sudden clamor attracts us to a
different part of the market. There drama is in full enactment. The
market place is at the edge of the bay and up the water steps three
exultant fishermen have dragged a tuna about five feet long, weighing
perhaps 175 pounds. It is not a particularly large fish of the species,
but its captors are highly exultant and one, with the inborn instinct of
the Latin-American to insult a captive or a fallen foe, stands on the
poor tuna’s head and strikes an attitude as one who invites admiration
and applause. Perhaps our camera tempted him, but our inclination was to
kick the brute, rather than to perpetuate his pose, for the poor fish
was still living. It had been caught in a net, so its captors informed
us. On our own Florida and California coasts the tunas give rare sport
with a rod and line.
Like most people of a low order of intelligence the lower class native
of Panama is without the slightest sense of humanity to dumb animals. He
does not seem to be intentionally cruel--indeed he is too indolent to
exert himself unless something is to be gained. But he never lets any
consideration for the sufferings of an animal affect his method of
treating it. The iguana, ugliest of lizards, which he eats with avidity,
is one of his chief victims. This animal is usually taken alive by
hunters in order that he may undergo a preliminary fattening process
before being committed to the pot. In captivity his condition is not
pleasant to contemplate. Here at the market are eight or ten, living,
palpitating, looking out on the strange world with eyes of wistful
misery. Their short legs are roughly twisted so as to cross above their
backs, and the sharp claws on one foot are thrust through the fleshy
part of the other so as to hold them together without other fastening. A
five-foot iguana is fully three feet tail, and of that caudal yard at
least two feet of its tapering length is useless for food, so the native
calmly chops it off with his machete, exposing the mutilated but living
animal for sale.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
PANAMA FROM THE BAY; ANCON HILL IN THE BACKGROUND]
To our northern eyes there is probably no animal except a serpent more
repulsive than the iguana. He is not only a lizard, but a peculiarly
hideous one--horned, spined, mottled and warty like a toad. But
loathsome as he is, the wanton, thoughtless tortures inflicted upon him
by the marketmen invest him with the pathetic dignity which martyrs
bear.
Fish is apparently the great staple of the Panama market, as beseems a
place which is practically an island and the very name of which
signifies “many fishes”. Yet at the time I was there the variety exposed
for sale was not great. The corbina, apparently about as staple and
certain a crop as our northern cod, the red snapper, mullet and a flat
fish resembling our fresh water sunfish, were all that were exhibited.
There were a few West Indian lobsters too, about as large as our average
sized lobsters, but without claws, having antennae, perhaps 18 inches
long, instead. Shrimps and small molluscs were plentifully displayed. As
to meats the market was neither varied nor pleasing. If the assiduous
attentions of flies produce any effect on raw meats prejudicial to human
health, the Panama market offers rich field for some extension of the
sanitary powers of Col. Gorgas.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1913, F. E. Wright.
AVENIDA B. PANAMA CITY
Most of the streets in Panama end at the water side as the city is built
upon a narrow promontory. The effect of the blue water and sky closing
the end of the narrow street of parti-colored houses is picturesque.]
In one notable respect this Panama market differs from most open air
affairs of the sort. The vendors make no personal effort to sell their
goods. There is no appeal to passing buyers, no crying of wares, no
“ballyhoo,” to employ the language of Coney Island. What chatter there
is is chiefly among the buyers; the sellers sit silent by their wares
and are more apt to receive a prospective customer sulkily than with
alert eagerness. Indeed the prevalent condition of the Panamanian, so
far as observable on the streets, seems to be a chronic case of sulks.
Doubtless amongst his own kind he can be a merry dog, but in the
presence of the despised “gringo” his demeanor is one of apathy, or
contemptuous indifference. Perhaps what he was doing to the tuna and the
iguana the day of our visit to the market was only what he would like to
be doing to the northern invaders of his nondescript market place.
If you view the subject fairly the Panamanian in the street is somewhat
entitled to his view of the American invasion. Why should he be
particularly pleased over the independence of Panama and the digging of
the Canal? He got none of the ten million dollars, or of the $250,000
annual payment. That went to his superiors who planned the “revolution”
and told him about it when it was all over. The influx of Americans
brought him no particular prosperity, unless he drove a hack. They lived
in Commission houses and bought all their goods in their own commissary.
It was true they cleaned up his town, but he was used to the dirt and
the fumes of fumigation made him sneeze. Doubtless there was no more
yellow fever, but he was immune to that anyway.
[Illustration: POTTERY VENDORS NEAR THE PANAMA CITY MARKET]
But way down in the bottom of his heart the real unexpressed reason for
the dislike of the mass of Panamanians for our people is their
resentment at our hardly concealed contempt for them. Toward the more
prosperous Panamanian of social station this contempt is less
manifested, and he accordingly shows less of the dislike for Americans
that is too evident among the masses of the people. But as for the
casual clerk or mechanic we Americans call him “spiggotty” with frank
contempt for his undersize, his lack of education and for his large
proportion of negro blood. And the lower class Panamanian smarting under
the contemptuous epithet retorts by calling the North Americans
“gringoes” and hating them with a deep, malevolent rancor that needs
only a fit occasion to blaze forth in riot and in massacre.
“Spiggotty”, which has not yet found its way into the
dictionaries, is derived from the salutation of hackmen seeking a
fare--“speaka-da-English”. Our fellow countrymen with a lofty and it
must be admitted a rather provincial scorn for foreign peoples--for your
average citizen of the United States thinks himself as superior to the
rest of the world as the citizen of New York holds himself above the
rest of the United States--are not careful to limit its application to
Panamanians of the hackdriving class. From his lofty pinnacle of
superiority he brands them all, from the market woman with a stock of
half a dozen bananas and a handful of mangoes to the banker or the
merchant whose children are being educated in Europe like their father
as “spiggotties”. Whereat they writhe and curse the Yankees.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
FROM A PANAMA BALCONY
In the narrow streets the broad balconies bring neighbors close
together]
“Gringo” is in the dictionaries. It is applied to pure whites of
whatever nation other than Spanish or Portuguese who happen to be
sojourning in Spanish-American lands. The Century Dictionary rather
inadequately defines it thus: “Among Spanish Americans an Englishman or
an Anglo-American; a term of contempt. Probably from Greico, a Greek”.
The dictionary derivation is not wholly satisfactory. Another one, based
wholly on tradition, is to the effect that during the war with Mexico
our soldiers were much given to singing a song, “Green Grow the Rashes,
Oh”! whence the term “Gringoes” applied by the Mexicans. The etymology
of international slang can never be an exact science, but perhaps this
will serve.
Whatever the derivation, whatever the dictionary definitions, the two
words “spiggotty” and “gringo” stand for racial antagonism, contempt and
aversion on the part of the more northern people; malice and suppressed
wrath on that of the Spanish-Americans.
You will find this feeling outcropping in every social plane in the
Republic of Panama. It is, however, noticeably less prevalent among the
more educated classes. Into the ten mile wide Canal Zone the Americans
have poured millions upon millions of money and will continue to do so
for a long time to come. Much of this money finds its way, of course,
into the hands of the Panamanians. The housing and commissary system
adopted by the Commission have deprived the merchants and landowners of
Colon of their richest pickings, but nevertheless the amount of good
American money that has fallen to their lot is a golden stream greater
than that which flowed over the old Royal Road in its most crowded days.
Few small towns will show so many automobiles as Panama and they have
all been bought since the American invasion.
[Illustration: THEIR FIRST COMMUNION
Panama is a Roman Catholic City with picturesque church processions]
Nevertheless the Americans are hated. They are hated for the commissary
system. The French took no such step to protect their workers from the
rapacity of Panama and Colon shopkeepers, and they are still talking of
the time of the French richness. They hate us because we cleaned their
towns and are keeping them clean--not perhaps because they actually
prefer the old filth and fatalities, but because their correction
implies that they were not altogether perfect before we came. For the
strongest quality of the Panamanian is his pride, and it is precisely
that sentiment which we North Americans have either wantonly or
necessarily outraged.
[Illustration: MARRIAGE IS AN AFFAIR OF SOME POMP]
Without pretension to intimate acquaintance with Panamanian home life I
may state confidently that this attitude toward the Yankees is
practically universal. The ordinary demeanor of the native when accosted
is sulky, even insolent. The shop-keeper, unless he be a Chinese, as
most of the better ones are, makes a sale as if he were indifferent to
your patronage, and throws you the finished bundle as though he were
tossing a bone to a dog. One Sunday morning, viewing the lottery drawing
at the Archbishop’s palace, I saw a well-dressed Panamanian, apparently
of the better class, roused to such wrath by a polite request that he
remove his hat to give a lady a better view, that one might have thought
the best blood of all Castile had been enraged by some deadly insult.
[Illustration: THE MANLY ART IN THE TROPICS]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A GROUP OF NATIONAL POLICE]
This smoldering wrath is ever ready to break out; the brutal savagery
which manifests itself in the recurrent revolutions of Spanish-America
is ever present in Panama. On the Fourth of July, 1912, the Americans
resident on the Zone held patriotic exercises at Ancon. After the
speeches and the lunch a number of the United States marines wandered
into the City of Panama and, after the unfortunate fashion of their
kind, sought out that red-lighted district of infamy which the Panama
authorities have thoughtfully segregated in a space between the public
hospital and the cemeteries. The men were unarmed, but in uniform.
Naturally their holiday began by visits to a number of Panamanian gin
mills where the liquid fuel for a fight was taken aboard. In due time
the fight came. A Panama policeman intervened and was beaten for his
pains. Other police came to his rescue. Somebody fired a shot and soon
the police, running to their station, returned with magazine rifles and
began pumping bullets into the unarmed marines. The latter for a time
responded with stones, but the odds were too great and they broke and
ran for the American territory of the Canal Zone. Meantime of course the
noise of the fusillade had alarmed the American authorities. At Ancon,
separated from Panama City only by an imaginary boundary line, the Zone
police were mustered for service in case of need, and at Camp Otis, an
hour away by rail, the 10th Infantry, U. S. A., was drawn up under arms,
and trains made ready to bring the troops to the riotous city at
command. But the order never came, though the 10th officers and men
alike were eager for it. It could come only through the American
minister, and he was silent, believing that the occasion did not warrant
the employment of the troops on the foreign soil of Panama. So the
marines--or as many of them as their officers could gather up--were sent
to their post, Camp Elliott, by train while those arrested by the
Panamanians were taken to the Chiriqui Jail, or to the Panama hospitals.
In jail the unarmed captives were beaten and tortured after the fashion
of the average Latin-American when he has a foe, helpless in his power.
The day ended with three American marines killed and many wounded; the
Americans, soldiers and civilians, both gritting their teeth and eager
to take possession of Panama; and the Panamanians, noisy, insolent,
boastful, bragging of how they had whipped the “Yankee pigs” and daring
the whole United States to attempt any punishment.
[Illustration: TABOGA, THE PLEASURE PLACE OF PANAMA]
The United States seems to have supinely “taken the dare”, as the boys
would say, for though the affray and the murders occurred in July, 1912,
nothing has yet been done. In answer to a formal query in April, 1913,
the Department of State replied that the matter was “still the subject
of diplomatic correspondence which it is hoped will have a satisfactory
termination”.
Americans on the Zone are depressed over the seeming lack of vigor on
the part of the home government. They say that the apparent immunity
enjoyed by the assailants of the marines has only enhanced the
contemptuous hatred of the natives for the Americans. “Let them step on
our side of the line”, says the swashbuckling native with a chip on his
shoulder, “and we’ll show ’em”. Among the Americans on the Zone there is
almost universal regret that the troops were not marched into Panama on
the day of the riot. Authority existed under the treaty with the
Republic of Panama. The troops were ready. The lesson need not have been
a severe one, but it was deserved and would have been lasting.
Furthermore those best equipped to judge say that the event is only
deferred, not averted. “Spiggotty” and “Gringo” will not continue long
to make faces over an imaginary line without a clash.
[Illustration: SANTA ANA CHURCH, 1764]
Despite the feeling against the Americans, all classes of Panamanians
must admit receiving a certain amount of advantage from the activities
of the Canal builders. Moreover the $10,000,000 paid over by the United
States for the Canal Zone has not been squandered, nor has it been
dissipated in graft. We are inclined to laugh because one of the first
uses to which it was put was to build a government theater, which is
opened scarce thirty days out of the year. But it is fair to take the
Latin temperament into consideration. There is no Latin-American
republic so impoverished as not to have a theater built by the public.
The Republic of Panama, created overnight, found itself without any
public buildings whatsoever, barring the jail. Obviously a national
capitol was the first need and it was speedily supplied. If one wing was
used to house a theater that was a matter for local consideration and
not one for cold-blooded Yankees to jeer about. The Republic itself was
a little theatrical, rather reminiscent of the papier-mâché creations of
the stage carpenter, and might be expected to vanish like a
transformation scene. At any rate with the money in hand the Panamanians
built a very creditable government building, including a National
Theater, and an imposing building for the National Institute as well.
They might have done worse. It showed that the revolution was more of a
business affair than most Central-American enterprises of that sort. The
average leader of so successful an enterprise would have concealed the
greater part of the booty in a Paris bank account to his own order, and
used the rest in building up an army for his own maintenance in power.
Panama has her needed public buildings--let us wink at the theater--and
$7,500,000 invested in New York against a time of need.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE PANAMA NATIONAL INSTITUTE
In the background is the Canal administration building and the residence
of Col. Gorgas]
The three government buildings in the City of Panama are all creditable
architecturally, and from a superficial standpoint structurally as well.
Whenever you are shown a piece of government work in a Latin-American
country your guide always whispers “graft”--as for that matter is the
practice in New York as well. But Panama seems to have received the
worth of its money. The Government Palace, which corresponds to our
national capitol, stands facing a little plaza open toward the sea. It
is nearly square, 180 by 150 feet, surrounding a tasteful court or patio
after the South American manner. Built of rubble masonry it is faced
with white cement, and is of a singularly simple and effective
architectural style for a Latin-American edifice. The building houses
the Assembly Hall, the Government Theater and the public offices. The
interior of the theater, which seats about 1000, is rather in the
European than the North American style with a full tier of boxes, large
foyers decorated with paintings by Panama artists, and all the
appurtenances of a well-appointed opera house.
[Illustration: THE MUNICIPAL BUILDING]
[Illustration: THE NATIONAL PALACE AND THEATER]
Next to the Government Palace the most ambitious public building in
Panama is the home of the National Institute, or University, which
nestles at the foot of Ancon Hill. This is a group of seven buildings
surrounding a central court. The Institute is designed in time to become
a true university, but its accommodations are at present far in advance
of its needs. Equipped with an excellent faculty it will for some time
to come--it was opened only in 1911--suffer from a lack of pupils,
because the public schools in the Republic are not yet fitted to equip
pupils for a university course. The population of Panama is largely
illiterate. The census in 1911 showed 60,491 children of school age, and
only 18,607 enrolled in schools of all classes. Of those more than
16,000 were enrolled in the primary schools. The Government however is
doing all it can to encourage education among the masses, and the
National Institute will offer to all who fit themselves to enter its
classes not only free tuition, but free board and lodging as well.
The third considerable public building in Panama is the Municipal
Building which stands at one corner of the Cathedral Plaza. It contains,
beside the council chamber and usual offices, the Columbus Library of
about 2500 books, including many rare volumes on the ancient history of
the Isthmian land and its people.
To return however to the physical aspects of the City of Panama. It is
recorded of a certain King of Spain that when certain bills for the
fortification of Panama City were presented to him he gazed into
vacancy with the rapt eyes of one seeing visions.
“Methinks I behold those walls from here”, quoth he to the suppliant
treasurer, “they must be so prodigious”!
[Illustration: _Photo by Gause_
SALIENT ANGLE OF LANDWARD WALL]
Indeed what remains of the walls of Panama is impressive to American
eyes that, accustomed to the peace and newness of our own towns, always
rejoice in seeing the relics of the time when every city was a walled
camp. Ruins and the remnants of by-gone days of battle are now and will
become increasingly objects of human interest. For in the centuries to
come our present edifices of iron sheathed with slabs of stone or brick
will disintegrate into rust and clay, while as for the scenes of our
most glorious battles they remain even today as barely discernible lines
of earthworks. Gone is the day of turreted castles, frowning walls,
bastions, ravelins and donjon keeps.
It is little wonder that even the remnants of Panama’s wall are
impressive. The new city was decreed by the Queen of Spain in 1672, or
about a year after Morgan had despoiled and destroyed Old Panama. The
site was chosen largely because of the opportunity it afforded for
defense, and the good Bishop had scarcely selected the site for the
Cathedral when the military officials began staking out the line of the
walls. Though almost 250 years have since passed a great part of these
fortifications is still intact, and the plan of the whole is still
easily traceable amid the narrow streets of the crowded little city.
Most notable of the sections still standing is the sea wall, sometimes
called Las Bovedas, from which on the one hand one looks down on the
inmates of the flowery little Chiriqui Prison, and on the other out to
sea--past the shallow harbor with its army of pelicans, past the tossing
little native fishing and market boats, past the long Balboa fill where
the Canal builders have thrown a mountain into the sea and made a vast
plain, and so on to the three little islands, rising craggy from the
ocean where the Great Republic of the North is mounting the cannon that
shall guard the entrance of the Canal from any invader. Very different
from the old Spanish fort of the 17th century are these military works
of the 20th and not nearly so picturesque. Such as they are must be left
to the imagination, for the military authorities rigidly bar the camera
from the post.
[Illustration: _Photo by Gause_
BOYS SKATING ON SEA WALL]
The original city stood on a peninsula, and three sides of this were
bounded by the sea wall, rising from about high water mark to a height
of from twenty to thirty feet. About half way between the present plazas
of the Cathedral and Santa Ana the wall turned inward with a great
frowning bastion at each corner and crossed the Isthmus. A moat was dug
on its landward side, shutting off all communication with the mainland
save over the drawbridge and through the sally-port on the line of the
Avenida Centrale. With drawbridge up and sally-port closed the old town
was effectually shut off from attack by land, while its guns on the
landward wall effectually commanded the broad plain on which now stands
the upper part of the town, and the declivities of Ancon Hill where now
are the buildings of the Zone hospital and the Tivoli Hotel.
[Illustration: VAULTS IN THE PANAMA CEMETERY
The small sepulchres are rented for a specified time, usually three
years. Unless the lease is then renewed the bones of the tenant are cast
out into a common pile.]
A good bit of construction and of military engineering was the wall of
Panama--our own engineers on the Canal have done no better. Round the
corner from La Mercedes Church a salient bastion crops out among fragile
frame tenements and jerry-built structures. The angle is as sharp as
though the storms of two and a half centuries had not broken over it.
Climb it and you will find the top level, grassy, and broad enough for a
tennis court full thirty feet above the level of the town. The
construction was not unlike that of the center walls of the locks
designed by the best American engineers. Two parallel walls of masonry
were built, about forty to fifty feet apart and the space between filled
in with dirt, packed solidly. On this part of the wall were no bomb
proofs, chambers or dungeons. The guns were mounted _en barbette_, on
the very top of the wall and discharged through embrasures in the
parapet. Rather let it be said that they were to have been fired, for
the new Panama was built after the plague of the pirates had passed and
the bane of the buccaneers was abated. No foe ever assaulted the city
from its landward side. In the frequent revolutions the contending
parties were already within the town and did their fighting in its
streets, the old walls serving no more useful purpose than the ropes
which define a prize ring. Only the sea-wall has heard the thunder of
cannon in deadly conflict. There during the brief revolution which gave
the United States the whip hand in Panama a Colombian gunboat did indeed
make a pretense of shelling the city, but was driven away by machine
guns mounted on the wall.
[Illustration: RUINS OF SAN DOMINGO CHURCH]
Within the walls, or the portion of the town the walls once surrounded,
live the older families of native Panamanians, or those of foreign birth
who have lived so long upon the Isthmus as to become identified with its
life. The edifices along the streets are more substantial, the shops
more dignified than in the newer quarter without. There are few, if any,
frame structures and these evidently patched in where some fire has
swept away more substantial predecessors. This part of Panama is
reminiscent of many small towns of Spain or Portugal. The galleries nod
at each other across streets too narrow to admit the burning sun, or to
permit the passage of more than one vehicle at a time. The older
churches, or their ruins, diversify the city streets, and the Cathedral
Plaza in the very center with the great open café of the historic Hotel
Centrale at one side has a distinctly foreign flavor. Here as one sits
in the open listening to the native band and sipping a drink--softer, if
one be wise, than that the natives thrive upon--and watches the native
girls of every shade and in gayest dress driving or loitering past, one
feels far from the bustling North American world, far from that snap and
ginger and hustle on which Americans pride themselves. And then perhaps
the music is suddenly punctuated by heavy dull “booms”, like a distant
cannonade, and one knows that only a few miles away dynamite is rending
rock and man is grappling fiercely with nature.
Carnival occupies the four days preceding Ash Wednesday, the period
known in all Catholic countries as the Mardi Gras. For years its gaiety
has been preceded by a vigorous political contest for the high honor of
being Queen of the Carnival, though it is said that in later years this
rivalry has been less determined than of yore. At one time, however, it
was contended for as strenuously as though the presidency of the
republic was at stake and the two political parties--liberal and
conservative--made it as much a stake of political activity as though
the destiny of the State was involved. Happy the young woman who had a
father able and willing to foot the bills, for no corrupt practices act
intervened to save candidates from the wiles of the campaign grafter, or
to guard the integrity of the voter from the insidious temptations of
the man with a barrel.
It would be chivalric to say that the one issue in the campaign is the
beauty of the respective candidates, but alas for a mercenary age! The
sordid spirit of commercialism has crept in and the Panamanian papa must
look upon the ambitions of his beauteous daughter as almost as expensive
as a six cylinder automobile, a trip to Europe, or a yearning for a
titled husband. But sometimes there are compensations. It is whispered
that for one in retail trade in a large way it is no bad advertisement
to have a Carnival Queen for a daughter.
[Illustration: SOME CARNIVAL FLOATS
In the car shown in the upper right-hand corner is the Queen of the
Carnival of 1913]
We have tried carnivals in various of our more cold-blooded American
cities, but we cannot get the spirit. Our floats are more artistic and
expensive, our decorations are more lavish, but we sit and view the
parade with detached calmness as though the revelers were hired clowns.
In Panama everybody joins in the sport. The line of carriages around the
park in the Plaza Centrale, thence by the Avenida to the Plaza Santa Ana
and back is unbroken. The confetti falls like a January snow and the
streets are ankle deep. Everyone is in mask and you can never tell
whether the languishing eyes peering out upon you are set in a face of
pearl or of ebony. The noise of innumerable horns and rattles rises to
Heaven and reverberates in the narrow streets, while the bells jangle
out of tune, as is their custom. Oh, those bells of Panama! Never were
so many peals and chimes out of harmony. Stedman, who heard them only in
an ordinary moment, not in their Mardi Gras madness, put them to verse
thus:
“Loudly the cracked bells overhead
Of San Francisco ding
With Santa Ana, La Merced,
Felipe answering.
Banged all at once, and four times four
Morn, noon and night the more and more,
Clatter and clang with huge uproar,
The bells of Panama”.
[Illustration: THE ANCIENT CATHEDRAL
Its towers have looked down on carnival, revolution, revelry and riot]
Señoritas of sundry shades look down sweetly from the balconies, and
shower confetti on gallant caballeros who stalk along as giant
chanticleers, or strive to entangle in parti-colored tapes the lances of
a gay party of toreadors. At night some of the women enmesh giant
fireflies in their raven locks with flashing effect. King License rules
supreme, and some of the horseplay even in the brightly lighted cafés of
the Centrale and Metropolitan rather transcends the limits of coldly
descriptive prose. The natives will tell you that the Cathedral Plaza is
the center of propriety; the Plaza Santa Ana a trifle risqué. After
observation and a return at daybreak from the carnival balls held at the
Centrale and Metropolitan Hotels you can meditate at your leisure upon
the precise significance of the word propriety in Panama at Mardi Gras.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE POLICE STATION, PANAMA]
The clause in the treaty which grants to the United States authority to
maintain order in the Republic might very readily be stretched to
include police power over Panama. This has not been done however and the
city has its own police force, an exceedingly numerous one for a town of
its size. Undoubtedly, however, diplomatic representations from the
United States have caused the Panamanians to put their police
regulations somewhat in accord with North American ideas. There are no
more bull fights--“We never had very good bull-fights anyway”, said a
Panama gentleman plaintively acquiescing in this reform. Cock-fights
however flourish and form, with the lottery drawing, the chief Sunday
diversion. A pretty dismal spectacle it is, too, with two attenuated
birds, often covered with blood and half sightless, striking fiercely at
each other with long steel spurs, while a crowd of a hundred or so,
blacks and whites, indiscriminately yell encouragement and shriek for
bets from the surrounding arena. The betting in fact is the real support
of the game. The Jamaicans particularly have their favorite cocks and
will wager a week’s pay on their favorites and all of their wives’
laundry earnings they can lay hands upon as well. One or two gamecocks
tethered by the leg are as common a sight about a Jamaican’s hut as
“houn’ dawgs” around a Missouri cabin.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF MERCY (LA MERCED)]
If there is any regulation of the liquor traffic in Panama, it is not
apparent to the casual observer. Nowhere does one see so much drinking,
and nowhere that people drink at all is there less drunkenness. It is a
curious fact that these two phenomena--wide-open drinking places and
little drunkenness--are often found together. In Panama the saloons are
legion, and I regret to say the biggest of them are run by Americans. No
screens obstruct a full view of the interiors, and hardened tipplers
flaunt their vice in the faces of all beholders. Perhaps the very
publicity impels them to quit before they are hopelessly befuddled.
Possibly the moist and somewhat debilitating climate permits the
innocuous use of stimulants to a greater extent than would be possible
in the North. Beside the absence of any scandalous open drunkenness
there seems to be some significance in the fact that the records of the
Zone hospitals show a surprisingly small number of deaths from diseases
induced by chronic alcoholism. But the casual observer strolling on
Avenida Centrale, or along the streets tributary to it, might be excused
for thinking Panama one great grog shop. It is curious, too, that
despite the Latin character of the populace the taste for light wines,
in which some see the hope of national temperance, does not seem
general. Whisky, brandy and rum are the regular tipples. On a still
remembered night in Panama, before the American invasion, the Centrale
Hotel bar was made free to all. No drinks were served to the thirsty,
but to all who appeared a bottle was given and the line marched past for
some hours. Yet, even at that, there was no considerable drunkenness
observed. Apparently for the Panamanians drink is not a hopeless evil,
but to the soldiers and marines of the United States stationed on the
Isthmus and denied the rational social life of a well-regulated canteen
the open doors of the saloons of Panama are as the open doors to a
hotter spot. Their more strenuous temperaments will not stand the
stimulant which leaves a Panamanian as stolid as before. The fatal riot
of July 4, 1912, is one illustration of what Panama saloon hospitality
may do with the men who wear the khaki.
[Illustration: YOUNG AMERICA ON PANAMA BEACH]
[Illustration: READY TO CONTROL THE PACIFIC]
Shopping in Panama is a decidedly cosmopolitan enterprise. The
shopkeeper of whom I bought a Panama hat, made in Ecuador, did business
under a Spanish name, was in fact a Genoese and when he found I could
speak neither Spanish nor Italian coaxed me up to his price in French.
Most of the retail prices are of so elastic a sort that when you have
beaten them down two-thirds you retire with your package perfectly
confident that they would have stood another cut. Nevertheless the
Chinese merchants, who are the chief retail dealers in the tropics,
compel respect. They live cleanly, are capable business men, show none
of the sloth and indifference of the natives, and seem to prosper
everywhere. The Chinese market gardens in the outskirts of Panama are a
positive relief for the neatness of their trim rows of timely plants.
The Panamanian eats yams and grumbles that the soil will grow nothing
else; the Chinaman makes it produce practically all the vegetables that
grow in our northern gardens.
Avenida Centrale ends its arterial course at the sea wall of the city,
or at least at that part of the sea wall which is the best preserved and
retains most of its old-time dignity. It is here something like the
Battery at Charleston, S. C., though the houses fringing it are not of a
like stateliness, and the aristocracy of the quarter is somewhat
tempered by the fact that here, too, is the city prison. Into the
courtyards of this calaboose you can gaze from sundry little sentry
boxes, the little sentries in which seem ever ready to step out to let
the tourist step in and afterward pose for his camera, with rifle, fixed
bayonet and an even more fixed expression. The greater part of one of
the prison yards is given over to flower beds, and though sunken some
twenty feet or more below the crest of the wall, is thoughtfully
provided with such half-way stations in the way of lean-to sheds,
ladders and water butts that there seems to be no reason why any
prisoner should stay in who wants to get out. But perhaps they don’t
often yearn for liberty. A wire fence cuts off the woman’s section of
the jail and the several native women I observed flirting assiduously
with desperate male malefactors from whom they were separated only by
this fence, seemed content with their lot, and evidently helped to
cultivate like resignation in the breasts of their dark adorers. A
white-clad guard, machete at side and heavy pistol at belt, walks among
them jingling a heavy bunch of keys authoritatively but offering no
interruption to their tender interludes.
On the other side of the row of frame quarters by which the prison yard
is bisected you can see at the normal hours the prisoners taking their
meals at a long table in the open air. Over the parapet of the sea wall
above, an equally long row of tourists is generally leveling cameras,
and sometimes exchanging lively badinage with some criminal who objects
to figuring in this amateur rogues’ gallery. To the casual spectator it
all savors of opera bouffe, but there are stories a-plenty that the
Panama jail has had its share of brutal cruelty as have most places
wherein men are locked away from sight and subject to the whims of
others not so very much their superiors. Once the Chiriqui Prison was a
fortress, the bank of quarters for the prisoners formed the barracks,
and the deep archways under the sea wall were dungeons oft populated by
political prisoners. Miasma, damp and the brutality of jailers have many
a time brought to occupants of those dungeons their final discharge, and
a patch of wall near by, with the bricks significantly chipped, is
pointed out as the place where others have been from time to time stood
up in front of a firing squad at too short a range for misses. The
Latin-American lust for blood has had its manifestations in Panama, and
the old prison has doubtless housed its share of martyrs.
[Illustration: THE FLOWERY CHIRIQUI PRISON
Where native women prisoners may flirt without interruption with male
malefactors, separated only by a wire fence]
But one thinks little of the grimmer history of the Chiriqui Prison,
looking down upon the bright flower beds, and the gay quadroon girls
flirting with some desperate character who is perhaps “in” for a too
liberal indulgence in rum last pay day. Indeed the guard wards off more
sanguinary reminiscences by telling you that they used to hold bull
baitings--a milder form of bull-fight--in the yard that the captives in
the dungeons might witness the sport, and perhaps envy the bull, _quien
sabe_?
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE MARKET FOR SHELL FISH
The black spots on the roof are vultures, the official scavengers]
The present town of Panama does not impress one with the air of being
the scene of dark crimes of covetousness, lust and hate. Its police
system, viewed superficially, is effective and most of the malefactors
in the Chiriqui Jail are there for trivial offenses only. One crime of a
few years ago however bids fair to become historic. One of the banks in
the town was well known to be the repository of the funds needed for the
payroll of the Canal force. It was the policy of the Commission to pay
off as much as possible in gold and silver, and to a very great extent
in coins of comparatively small denomination in order to keep it on the
Zone. The money paid out on pay drafts comes swiftly back through the
Commissary to the banks which accordingly accumulate a very considerable
stock of ready cash as a subsequent pay day approaches. Now the banks of
Panama do not seem to even the casual observer as strongholds, and
probably to the professional cracksman they are positive invitations to
enterprise. Accordingly, three men, only one of whom had any criminal
record or was in any sense an habitué of the underworld, set about
breaking into one of the principal banks. They laid their plans with
deliberation and conducted their operations with due regard for their
personal comfort. Their plan was to tunnel into the bank from an
adjoining building, in which they set up a bogus contracting business to
account for the odds and ends of machinery and implements they had
about. The tunnel being dark they strung electric lights in it. Being
hot, under that tropic air, they installed electric fans. All the
comforts of a burglar’s home were there.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA]
From a strictly professional standpoint they made not a single blunder.
Their one error--almost a fatal one--was in not being good churchmen.
For they had planned to enter the bank late on a Saturday night. Tuesday
was to be pay day and on Monday the full amount of the pay roll would be
drawn out. But Saturday night it would all be there--several hundred
thousand dollars--and they would have all day Sunday to pack it securely
and make their getaway. Midnight, then, saw them creeping into the
bank. The safe yielded readily to their assaults, but it disgorged only
a beggarly $30,000 or so. What could be the trouble? Just then the
knowledge dawned on the disappointed bandits that Monday was a Saint’s
day, the bank would be closed, therefore the prudent Zone paymaster had
drawn his funds on Saturday. The joke was on the cracksmen.
With the comparatively few thousands they had accumulated the
disappointed outlaws took a motor boat and made for Colombia. Had they
secured the loot they expected they would have been made welcome there,
for Colombia does not recognize her run-away child Panama, and no
extradition treaty could have been appealed to by the Panamanians
against their despoilers. As it was they quarreled over the booty. One
of the three was killed; the other two were arrested for the murder, but
soon went free. Their complete immunity from prosecution calls attention
to the fact that a few hours’ trip in a motor boat will take any one
guilty of crime in Panama to a land where he will be wholly free from
punishment.
Churches in Panama, or the ruins of them, are many, and while not
beautiful are interesting. Everybody goes to see the famous flat arch of
the San Domingo Church, and its disappearance will be a sore blow to
guides and post-card dealers. Aside from its curious architectural
quality the arch derives interest from a legend of its construction by a
pious monk. Twice it fell before the mortar had time to set. The third
time its designer brought a stool and sat himself down below the heavy
keystone. “If it falls”, he said, “I go with it”. But that time the arch
stood firm, and it has withstood the assaults of centuries to come at
last to the ignoble end of incorporation in a tenement house. The arch,
which certainly looks unstable, is often pointed to as an evidence of
the slight peril on the Isthmus from earthquake shocks. Such convulsions
of nature are indeed not unknown but are usually feeble. That great
shock that overthrew San Francisco was not even registered by the
seismograph on the Canal zone.
[Illustration: IN A PANAMA PARK]
Practically all the churches are of the same plan--two towers at the
front corners with the façade built between. The towers of the Cathedral
rise high above the roof and the tapering steeples are covered with
slabs of mother-of-pearl, which make a brave spectacle from the bay when
the rosy rays of the setting sun play upon them. Within all the churches
are poor and barren of ornament. They have been stripped of their funds
by various authorities beginning with Spain itself, one of the Spanish
generals in the revolutionary days having seized all the available funds
to pay for transportation for his army. Perhaps the church resented
this, for in later days it voluntarily contributed largely out of its
remaining treasure to the revolutionary cause. Later still its gold and
silver ornaments and altar pieces were confiscated by some faction
temporarily in power. Indeed the church has been the football of
politics, always entangled with the State and thus far suffering in
prestige and pocket by the association.
[Illustration: SALVATION ARMY IN PANAMA]
The Cathedral owes its completion to a negro bishop, the son of a
charcoal burner who had determined that his boy should rise to higher
station. By hard study the lad secured admittance to the priesthood and
ultimately rose to be Bishop of Panama, the first native to fill that
post. Out of his own salary he paid much of the cost of building the
great church, the corner-stone of which had been laid when the city was
founded, and by his zeal in soliciting funds secured its completion.
A systematic tour of the churches of Panama is well worth the visitor’s
time. More that is curious will be found than there is of the beautiful,
and to the former class I am inclined to consign a much begrimed
painting in the Cathedral which tradition declares to be a Murillo.
Perhaps more interesting than the Cathedral is the Church of San
Francisco, in the Plaza Bolivar. The present structure dates back only
to 1785, two former edifices on the same site having been burned. The
ruins of the beautiful cloister of the Franciscan convent adjoin it, but
are concealed from view by an unsightly board fence which the tourist,
not having a guide, will not think of passing through. The ruins,
however, are well worth seeing.
[Illustration: COSTUME DE RIGUEUR FOR FEBRUARY]
Clubs share with churches in the social life of Panama. Perhaps indeed
they rather outshine the latter. At any rate such buildings as the Union
Club and the University Club, both of which abut upon the bay would be a
credit to a city twice the size. The former club, as its name implies,
was intended to be a meeting place where liberals and conservatives
could lay aside political differences in social unity. However, politics
in Panama, as in all places where there are not real vital issues
dividing the parties, breeds bitter personal feeling and the Union Club
is said to be far from being the home of political unity. It has,
however, an excellent building, with a spacious ball-room, a swimming
tank and a magnificent view of Panama Bay with its picturesque islands.
The University Club is more an American club than a Panamanian, and it
no longer observes the restriction as to membership which its name would
imply. It too has a spacious ball-room and is a social center for the
Zone dwellers who form the major part of its membership.
The Cathedral Plaza is socially the center of town, though
geographically the old French Plaza of Santa Ana is more near the
center. Directly opposite the Cathedral is the Hotel Centrale, built
after the Spanish fashion, with four stories around a central court. In
the blither days of the French régime this court was the scene of a
revelry to which the daily death roll formed a grim contrast. However
the occasional gaiety of the Centrale Patio did not end with the French.
Even in the prosaic Yankee days of the last carnival the intervention of
the police was necessary to prevent a gentleman from being wholly
denuded, and displayed to the revelers in nature’s garb as a specimen of
the superior products of Panama.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BUST OF LIEUT. NAPOLEON B. WYSE
This bust stands on the sea wall. The picture shows it guarded by a
United States soldier and a Panama policeman]
On a nearby corner of the Plaza is the old French administration
building, afterward occupied by the Isthmian Canal Commission. In 1905
it was a central point of infection for the yellow-fever epidemic, and
though repeatedly fumigated was finally abandoned by the American
engineers who moved their headquarters out to Culebra.
Life in Panama City is mainly outdoor life, in the dry season at any
rate, and even in the wet season the Panamanians move about in the open
like a lot of damp and discontented flies. The almost continuous line of
balconies shields the sidewalks from the rain, and nobody in Panama is
too busy to stop a half hour or so at street crossings for the downpour
to lessen. Sunday nights the band of the Republic plays in the Plaza,
and there all the people of the town congregate to listen to the music,
promenade and chat. It is the scene of that curious Latin-American
courtship which consists of following the adored one with appealing
eyes, but never by any possibility speaking to her. The procession of
girls and women is worth watching, whether the eyes be adoring or not,
and the costumes have a sort of strangeness befitting the scene. The
practice has grown up of leaving the outer walk for the negro and
negroid people, the inner paths being kept for the whites--but as the
walks merge into each other so too do the colors. If one wearies of the
moving crowds without, a step will bring him into the patio of the Hotel
Centrale where an excellent orchestra plays, and a gathering chiefly
native sips tropical drinks and disposes of the political issues of the
day with much oratory and gesticulation.
[Illustration: ON PANAMA’S BATHING BEACH]
As you make your way back to the hotel at night--if it is after eleven,
the driver will lawfully charge you twenty cents--you will vainly try to
recall any North American town of 40,000 people which can present so
many objects of interests to the visitor, and a spectacle of social life
so varied, so cosmopolitan and so pleasing.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
QUARANTINE STATION AT PACIFIC ENTRANCE TO CANAL]
The night life of the streets is as a rule placid, however, rather than
boisterous, nor is Panama an “all night town”. The rule of the tropics
is “early to rise” in any event and as a result those parts of the city
which the visitor sees usually quiet down by midnight and presently
thereafter the regions about the Cathedral Plaza are as quiet and
somnolent as Wall Street after dark. But in a more sequestered section
of the town, where the public hospital looks down significantly on the
spectacle from one side, and the cemeteries show sinister on the other,
revelry goes on apace until the cool dawn arises. There the clatter of
pianolas which have felt the climate sorely mingles with the clink of
glasses in cantinas that never close, and the laughter of lips to which,
in public at least, laughter is a professional necessity. Under the red
lights at midnight Panama shows its worst. Men of varied voyages,
familiar with the slums of Singapore and the purlieus of Paris declare
that this little city of a hybrid civilization outdoes them in all that
makes up the fevered life of the underworld. Scarcely a minute’s walk
away is the American town, quiet and restful under the tropic moon, its
winding streets well guarded by the Zone police, its houses wrapped in
vines and fragrant with flowers all dark in the hours of repose. But in
the congested tangle of concrete houses between the hospitals and the
cemetery madness and mirth reign, brains reel with the fumes of the
strange drinks of the tropics, and life is worth a passing
pleasure--nothing more. Men of many lands have cursed the Chagres fever
and the jungle’s ills, but the pest place of Panama has been subjected
to no purging process with all the efforts of the United States to
banish evil from the Isthmus.