CHAPTER II

ON THE GREAT SOUTH SEA

After a delightful and instructive week spent on the Isthmus, I prepared to start for Guayaquil, the chief seaport of Ecuador. The steamer was scheduled to leave promptly at noon, and all passengers were requested to be aboard about an hour before that time. A special train conveyed us from Panama to La Boca-now called Balboa -where a splendid steel wharf has been constructed and where several large ocean vessels may safely and conveniently moor at the same time. The Pacific entrance to the canal is at this point. In marked contrast with the mean range of the tide-a little more than a foot-at Colon, the range at Panama is twenty feet. For a long time it was supposed that the Pacific Ocean was from ten to twenty feet higher than the Caribbean Sea, but it is now known that both bodies of water are at the same level.

The view of the city of Panama from the deck of the steamer, as she glides southward through the placid waters of the bay is one of exceeding loveliness. Reposing at the foot of Ancon Hill and garlanded by emerald green verdure, it possesses throughout the year all the charm of Palermo in May or October.

About six miles to the south of the city is all that remains of Panama Viejo-Old Panama-which was ravaged and burned by that ruthless Welsh Buccaneer, Sir Henry Morgan, in 1671. Aside from an arch of a bridge and the foundations of some of the more notable buildings, now concealed by a dense network of shrub and vine, and overspread by a thick-matted forest, almost all that now remains of this former "Gate of the Western World" is the

massive and picturesque old tower of the Cathedral of St. Anastasius.

Old Panama was founded in 1518 by Pedrarias Davilathat Furor Dei-Scourge of God—as he was called, on account of his cruelties, on the site recommended by Balboa, and was the oldest European city on the mainland of the New World. The word Panama is of Indian origin and signifies "abounding in fish." On the seashore hard by were "quantities of very small mussels," and it is said that these mussel beds determined the site of the future metropolis "because the Spaniards felt themselves safe from hunger on account of these mussels."

For a long time Old Panama was, after Cartagena, the chief city of South America. It was celebrated as the "glorious city of Panama," as "the grandest metropolis in the South Seas," as the peer of Venice when the painted city of the doges was yet "the incomparable Queene" of the Adriatic. It was from this city that the conquistadores set forth on their marvelous careers of discovery and conquest. It was from here that the Pizarros and Almagro and Bellacazar sailed to Golden Peru. To the harbor of Panama came the rich galleons laden with the gold and silver from the land of the Incas and with the pearls from the islands of the South Sea.

It was then "the greatest mart for gold and silver in the whole world." And "as the city grew in wealth, so it grew in magnificence, in the costliness of its buildings, in the extravagance of its luxuries and in that languid sensu. ousness which saps life in the tropics." Its merchant princes lived like oriental satraps in stone houses of Moorish design, finished in carved aromatic woods and decked with the most beautiful tapestries and works of art that money could command. And as they appeared in public, in lace-decked attire or brocaded silk, with their retinue of slaves, they may well have outshone the gorgeously dressed Venetians who, in days long passed, strutted before an admiring crowd in the famed old Rialto.

Old Panama was the western terminus of the famous Gold Road, the camino real, over which long lines of mule trains carried countless millions of treasure to Venta Cruz, Puerto Bello and Nombre de Dios, on the way from Peru to Spain. Over this road traveled Drake and Morgan and other freebooters of lesser note.

The old harbor, too, has witnessed as stirring scenes as did the Gold Road, for here took place some of the most daring exploits of certain of the Buccaneers, notably that of Sawkins, Coxon and Ringrose in their capture of the famous old galleon, La Santisima Trinidad. The harbor "that saw all this," says Treves, "is now an utter solitude, silent and forgotten, a sea-refuge hidden in a mysterious forest, a place of shadows, haunted only by pelicans and sea birds, and where none but the ghosts of ships come in on the rising tide." Verily, sic transit gloria mundi.

Some forty or fifty miles southeast of Panama, we passed the famous group of Pearl Islands which attracted so much attention at the time of their discovery by Balboa, and which were for a long time so prolific a source of revenue for the Spanish crown. From the view-point of many of his countrymen, Balboa's most important achievement in crossing the Isthmus of Panama was not in discovering the boundless expanse of the South Sea-an achievement second only to that of Columbus-but in making known that group of islands which, next to the mines of Peru, contributed most to the coffers of the Spanish monarch.

Pearls were then so common that the Indians used them for adorning the paddles of their canoes. The chief of Terarequi-the largest of the Pearl Islands-gave to Gaspar Morales, who visited the place two years after Balboa's discovery-a basketful of pearls that weighed one hundred and ten marks-nearly nine hundred ounces-for which he received in exchange glass beads, mirrors, hawk-bells and similar articles of little value. In addition to this he prom1 Cradle of the Deep, p. 339, London, 1908.

ised to send to the Spanish monarch thenceforth an annual tribute of one hundred marks of pearls. Some of these pearls were as large as filberts and of exceeding beauty of form and luster, while others found in the same fisheries a short time subsequently at once took place among the largest and most perfect of the world's gems.

Oviedo, in the quaint translation of Eden, refers to the pearls of Terarequi and of the adjoining islands as follows: "Lykewise pearles are found and gathered in the South Sea cauled Mare del Sur. And the pearles of this Sea" and the Caribbean Sea "are verye bygge. Yet not so bigge as they of the Ilande of pearles cauled de las perlas or Margarita, which the Indians caul Terareque, lying in the goulfe of Saincte Michael where greater pearles are founde and of greater price then in any other coaste of the Northe Sea, in Cumana, or in any other parte. I speake this as a trewe testimonie of syght having been longe in that South Sea, and makynge curious inquisition to bee certenly informed of all that perteyneth to the fysshynge of pearles. From this Ilande of Terarequi, there was brought a pearle of the fasshyon of a peare, wayunge XXXI. carattes, which Petrus Arias had amonge a thousande and so many poundes weight of other pearles which hee had when captayne Gaspar Morales (before Petrus Arias) passed to the saide ilande in the yeare 1515, which pearle was of great price. From the said Ilande also, came a great and verye rounde pearle, which I brought oute of the sea. This was as bigge as a smaule pellet of a stone bowe and of the weight of XXVI. Carattes. I bought it in the citie of Panama in the sea of Sur: and paide for it syxe hundreth and syxtie tymes the weyght thereof of good gold, and had it thre yeares in my custodie and after my returne into Spaine, soulde it to the earle of Nansao, Marquesse of Zenete, great chamberleyne to yowre maiestie, who gave it to the Marquesse his wyfe, the lady Mentia of Mendozza. I thyncke verely that this pearl was the greatest, fayrest and roundest that hath byn seene in those partes. For yowre maiestie owght

to understande that in the coaste of the sea of Sur, there are founde a hundreth great pearles rounde after the fasshyon of a peare, to one, that is perfectly rounde and greate. This Ilande of Terarequi, which the Christeans caule the Ilande of pearles, and others caule the Ilande of flowres, is founde in the eyght degree of the southe syde of the firme lande in the provynce of Golden Castyle or Beragua." 1

The pearling industry in these waters was an important one until the middle of the eighteenth century, and the size and orient of the pearls obtained rivaled those of Ceylon. After this date pearling gradually declined, although several ineffective attempts have been made to revive the industry. The fisherman, however, is still occasionally rewarded by the finding of a large and valuable pearl. A few years before my visit a native boy, aged fifteen, found a pearl for which he received $1,760, and for which an offer of thirty thousand francs was subsequently refused in Paris. Another pearl, worth $2,400, had been found, so we were informed, quite near the steamer anchorage at Panama.

A few leagues east from the Pearl Archipelago, is San Miguel Bay. This place had a special interest for us, as it was in the waters of the north shore of this bay that Balboa, sword in hand, formally took possession of the South Sea for the crown of Castile. Leaving the Caribbean at some point between Cape Tiburon and Caledonian Bay, he cut his way through the dense forests and savage jungles that impeded his march until at last on the memorable 25th of September, 1513,

1 The First Three English Books on America, p. 214, edited by Edward Arber, London, 1895.

The historian Acosta, who went to Peru in 1570, writing of the vast quantity of pearls found in these islands and elsewhere in the New World, says, "At the first pearles were in so great estimation, as none but royall persons were suffered to weare them, but at this day there is such abundance as that the negresses themselves do weare chaines thereof." Op. cit., Book IV, Chap. XV.