The Boy Travellers in South America. Thomas Wallace Knox
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amply repaid for them.
"Not the least interesting part of the sights were the fantastic shapes which the trees and vines had taken; in some places the trees were on the tops of walls thirty or forty feet high, and had thrown down roots on each side reaching into the ground. At every crevice in the walls little twigs were thrown off to hold the roots in place, and it almost seemed as though these vegetable growths had been endowed with human intelligence. Two or three times we were deceived by the appearance of the roots, and mistook them for snakes. Even when assured of their harmless character, Frank paused and deliberated before moving nearer, and I'm free to confess that I followed his example.
"We were accompanied on our excursion by a gentleman who lives in Panama, but had not been in the old city for two or three years. He said the place had two or three inhabitants, or, rather, there were that number of negroes who lived there, and acted as guides to visitors. With some difficulty he found the hut of one of them, and luckily for us its owner was at home. His only clothing was a strip of cloth around the waist and a pair of sandals on his feet, and the entire furniture of the place would have been dear at ten dollars. He had a few baskets and earthen jars, an old hammock, a rough bench to sleep on, an iron pot for cooking purposes, and a pair of rollers for crushing sugar-cane. He had a small patch of sugar-cane, another of bananas; the bay supplied him with fish, the beach afforded plenty of oysters, shrimps, and mussels, and the money obtained from visitors was enough for buying his tobacco and a few other trifles which made up the sum of his necessities, and were procured in a semi-annual trip to Panama. He declared that he was perfectly satisfied with his way of life, and as he had been there for twenty years and more, I have no doubt he spoke the truth.
"A prince in his palace could not have been more polite than was this dark-skinned hermit. He had no chairs to offer, but asked us to sit down on his bench; we accepted the invitation, and after handing us a gourd of water, which we found very refreshing, he put on his hat in order to be more fully dressed. Then, with true Spanish politeness, he told us that the house and all it contained were ours, but we couldn't see that we should have been much richer if we had taken him and his belongings at his word. We rested perhaps a quarter of an hour, talking with him about his solitary life, and then asked him to guide us through the old city.
"'Sí, Señores,' he replied, touching his hat in a most dignified manner, 'but would we drink some chichi before starting.'
"Chichi is the juice of the sugar-cane, and is a favorite beverage in this region; of course we consented, and he immediately picked up his machete (hatchet) and went out. In a little while he returned with an armful of sugar-cane, which he proceeded to pass through the rollers, after first bruising the canes with a mallet to make the work of crushing easier. Our Panama friend took one end of the machine, and got himself into quite a perspiration before the job was finished; I fancy he did not relish it, but our entertainer did not seem to mind it in the least. The machine was a rude construction, and not to be compared with the polished rollers that are to be found in sugar-manufactories on a large scale, but it was entirely adequate to the wants of our sable host.
"We drank the chichi, which was most refreshing, and then were shown through what is left of the city. Here and there we found portions of paved streets, and it was only by following the lines of the streets that we were able to get around at all. Then there were two or three groves with very little undergrowth, which are thought to have been public squares; evidently they were not paved, but macadamized, and trodden so hard that the undergrowth has obtained no hold, though the trees have not been so easily restrained. Our guide showed us a bridge over a stream in the southern part of the city; it is called the Punta de Embarcadero, and is said to have been the point where boats came to discharge or receive their cargoes, and the stream it crosses is about thirty feet wide. It is full only at high tide, and is more an arm of the sea than a flowing river. The bridge is of hewn stone, and was constructed with a single arch.
"When we had finished our wanderings among the ruins we went back to the hut, drank some more chichi, then mounted our horses, and returned to modern Panama by the way we went. We were thoroughly tired, but we voted unanimously that the day was well spent."
The excursion to Old Panama naturally roused the curiosity of the youths to know something of Morgan the buccaneer, and his exploits. The readers of this narrative may have a similar interest in the events of two hundred years ago, and we will briefly give them.
The rumors of the abundance of gold in the New World, which reached Spain after the discovery of America by Columbus, led to the conquest and settlement of the islands of the West Indies, and also of the mainland for a considerable distance north and south of the Isthmus. Within the fifty years following the first voyage of Columbus many colonies were planted, forts were built, soldiers were brought out in great numbers, and many ships laden with treasure were sent home from the New World. The stories grew with each repetition, and in a little while it was currently believed that there was sufficient gold in the cities of Mexico, Peru, and the other countries of South and Central America to enrich the entire population of Europe.
The Spanish conquerors were relentlessly cruel, and subjected the rulers and people of the conquered countries to all manner of tortures, in order to obtain their gold. The rumors of the vast treasures of the New World passed beyond Spain and reached England and France. Piracy was fashionable in those times, and it was not long after the Spanish treasure-ships began to traverse the ocean that the waters of the Caribbean Sea were thronged with piratical craft. Their crews were known as buccaneers, freebooters, pirates, or sea-robbers, and one name is as good as another. We will follow the example of the old historians and call them buccaneers, out of respect for their descendants, who dislike the word "pirate."
They had plenty of hiding-places among the islands and along the coast of the mainland, and their numbers increased so rapidly that they formed colonies, tilled the soil, and in many cases established something like local government, though it was not always very orderly. In some of their colonies the more peaceably inclined buccaneers lived on shore, raised crops, hunted for wild cattle or other game, and not infrequently they brought their families from the Old World or found wives among the natives. The rest of the community roved the seas in search of plunder, returning occasionally to the colony to refit their vessels, and deliver their proper share to the settlers on land, from whom provisions were obtained.
Sometimes prisoners were brought to the colonies and kept as slaves, but this was not the general practice, as it was not altogether safe; an escaping slave might reveal the rendezvous of the buccaneers, and, in spite of the greatest vigilance, escape was possible. Consequently, it was the custom to release prisoners on payment of a heavy ransom, or to sell them to be carried into slavery, where they could do no harm to their captors. If they could not be disposed of in either of these ways, or made useful in some manner, they were generally put to death. Sometimes a chief released his prisoners unconditionally, and without obtaining anything for them, but such action was not favorably received by his followers, as they considered it a loss of property and an indication of weakness totally inappropriate to his proper character. Human life was held at little value in those days, not only by freebooters, but by kings and princes in all parts of the world.
After all, there was little difference between the buccaneers, or pirates, and the people against whom their exploits were directed. Cortez, Balboa, Pizarro, and other leaders in the Spanish conquest of the New World were simply