Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . they harbor was wretched, usefulonly for small vessels which at hightide could come straight to the sea-wall, being left there by the recedingtide, high and dry, so that by quickaction they could be unloaded beforethe waters returned. A very con-siderable part of the food of the townwas fish brought thither by Indiansfrom Taboga and nearby islands. Such was the town which Morganraided. Because of the colossal dis-aster which befell it, a disaster with-out parallel since the days when theGoths and Vandals swept down overthe pleasant plain
Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . they harbor was wretched, usefulonly for small vessels which at hightide could come straight to the sea-wall, being left there by the recedingtide, high and dry, so that by quickaction they could be unloaded beforethe waters returned. A very con-siderable part of the food of the townwas fish brought thither by Indiansfrom Taboga and nearby islands. Such was the town which Morganraided. Because of the colossal dis-aster which befell it, a disaster with-out parallel since the days when theGoths and Vandals swept down overthe pleasant plains of Italy, there hasbeen a tendency to magnify the size,wealth and refinement of Panama atthe time of its fall. But studied calmly, with nodesire to exaggerate the qualities which made it sorich a prize, Panama may fairly be described as acity of about 30,000 people, with massive churches,convents and official buildings of masonry, with manystately houses of the type esteemed luxurious in thetropics, and peopled largely by pure-blooded Span-. CASA EEALE OR KING S HOUSEIts heavy walls show that it was planned for defense but the Spaniards abandoned it ants, and at least eight cloisters of nuns and the good evangelist found that theSpaniards are in this city much given to sinne,looseness and venery, for which reason, or perhapsbecause he feared much the heats, he made hasteto leave the town and left us none of those graphicdescriptions of which his pen was capable. THE ADVANCE OF THE BUCCANEERS 89 iards of the better type. It was too early a date forthe amalgamation of races now so much in evidenceon the Isthmus to have proceeded far, and the an-cient records show that the Spaniards of substancein the town had mainly come thither from started up the river from San Lorenzo,where he left 500 men to serve as a garrison, on the18th of January, 1761. His force comprised 1200men in five boats with artillery and thirty-twocanoes. The raiders planned
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Keywords: ., bookauthorabbotwil, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1913
