CHAPTER XVIII

THE CASTLE OF GOLD

So marvelously rich was Panama, so vast were the quantities of gold wrested from the Indians and from the mines, that the Spaniards called the isthmus Castillo del Oro or Golden Castle. For years the precious metal flowed in a steady stream from the mines of Veraguas and of Darien, and rapidly accounts of these riches spread until Panama became known as the greatest gold-producing country in the world at that time. Hence the name “Costa Rica” then applied to all the country from Honduras to Darien. The quarter of a million dollars that Morgan looted from Porto Bello was but a drop in the bucket compared with the annual output of Panamanian mines.

No one can say how much gold was taken from the mines of Darien and Veraguas by the Dons, for most of the records, if any existed, disappeared with the burning of Old Panama; and others have been lost or destroyed in the revolutions and disturbances since then. But here and there, in the musty files of sleepy, half-forgotten old towns that once were great and prosperous cities of the gold districts, one may find stray bits of information which throw some light on the gold output of Panama’s mines in early days.

Thus, in Veraguas we learn, from papers still preserved in Santiago, that it was customary for the Crown to receive a royalty of five per cent. or a quinto of all gold exported from the province. We also find from the age-yellowed treasury bills that in one year the Crown received over twenty thousand castellanos as its share of Veraguas gold. In other words, considerably over two tons of the yellow metal, or about two million dollars’ worth of gold, were annually exported from this one district! And this was only a fraction of the total amount mined. That which went into private pockets, that which was expended for supplies, transportation, et cetera, that which went to the Church did not enter into these figures at all. Going further into the records, we learn that in 1570 over two thousand slaves were employed in the Veraguas gold-mines, and contemporary writers state that a placer that did not yield at least a castellano of gold to a “common kneading-trough” was not considered worth working.

And Veraguas was not the only gold-producing district, by any means. The mines of Chiriqui produced stupendous quantities; the mines of Darien were world-famed; there were mines in the present province of Cocle, in Los Santos, and in many other districts; and the total value produced staggers the imagination. It is stated in official documents that one small private mine produced enough gold in one year to build the college in Panama, a church, and several lordly mansions, and provided a comfortable fortune for the owner in addition! Moreover, incalculable sums were taken from the Indians and from the prehistoric graves.

No wonder, then, that Panama was the richest and most prosperous of Spain’s possessions in the New World; for in addition to its own wealth it was the receiving and shipping point for all the treasures from ports of Mexico, Central and South America on the Pacific, and the East Indies.

Besides all this, its wealth in cattle was enormous; vast quantities of valuable woods, dyes, and medicinal plants were obtained from the forests; the yield of pearls from the Pearl Islands and the waters of Panama Bay was worth a king’s ransom yearly, and the fertile lands produced great crops of sugar, tobacco, coffee, and cacao.

This being the case, we naturally wonder why Panama has fallen to its present state; why not a single mine is being worked to-day; why the “Castle of Gold” has become an insignificant republic perpetually bordering on bankruptcy; why it has fallen from its former proud estate as the richest country in the New World to a poverty-stricken land that would find it impossible to make both ends meet if it were not for the revenue it derives from the canal and trade with Zone employees, the army and navy, and the annual influx of tourists.

First and most important of all in the cessation of Panama’s gold output was the fact that the Spaniards worked their mines by slave labor, usually making use of the native Indians. These often rebelled, and when opportunity offered massacred their cruel masters, destroyed the workings, and concealed or obliterated the approaches, so that the mines were lost. The negro and Moorish slaves brought in, ran away, became allies of the buccaneers and the Indians, led a wild bush life, and were a constant menace to the outlying settlements. Still later, with the emancipation of the slaves, many mines could not be worked at a profit and were abandoned, while in numerous cases the incredibly rich placers, which were mere pockets, were worked out and exhausted.

Revolutions, rebellions, and wars did their part as well. The cattle ranges were deserted, outlying estates were destroyed, unprotected settlements were abandoned, and the jungle took possession of fields and lands.

But all this took many years. Even as late as 1850 virtually all the commerce of the isthmus was paid for in raw Panamanian gold, and such tumble-down, half-deserted interior towns as Santiago de Veraguas, Las Minas, San Francisco, and a score of others were busy, populous centers of wealth, fashion, and commerce.

And all the former prosperity of the country might have been won back and Panama might still be a rich and thriving country, had it not been for its people.

The old Dons, despite their ruthlessness, and their insatiable lust for gold, were daring, indomitable men. No hardship was too great for them to endure if there were riches to be won or new lands to conquer. No undertaking was too difficult, no dangers could deter them; even death mattered little, and, fighting the savages as they went, they overran the land, established towns, discovered mines, cultivated the soil, built cities, and endured every privation in building up the wealth and prosperity of the Castillo del Oro.

But not so their descendants, the decadent people that have inherited the land which once was the brightest and richest jewel of all the colonies of the Spanish Crown. With very few exceptions the Panamanians are of a mongrel breed—a mixture of the Spaniard, the negro, and the Indian, with all of the worst and few of the best qualities of the three. Add to this a goodly sprinkling of Chinese blood, a dash of that of the old Moorish slaves, a seasoning of all the races of Europe which have passed across the isthmus during four hundred years, and we have the Panamanian of to-day. A few old families there are, to be sure, in whose veins the blood of the Castilian conquistadors runs fairly unmixed, and in certain outlying villages in the interior the people pride themselves on their pure Spanish descent. But the average Panamanian is the product of a melting-pot wherein the blood of a dozen races has been blended. Moreover, the blood has been of a far from desirable kind. It is the blood of adventurers, of soldiers of fortune, of remittance men, of those who have sought refuge where no extradition treaties were in force; the blood of gamblers and seamen, of down-trodden slaves and cowed and beaten Indians—the heritage of that vast horde that passed over the Bridge of the World from the days of Balboa to the building of the canal.

In the various portions of the republic the Panamanian varies somewhat, but only in the matter of blood, not in character. In the northern and western provinces he is mainly of Spanish and Indian extraction; in the Darien district and the east he is largely African, and in the cities he is a combination of everything—a hodgepodge of races, of colors, and of ancestry such as can be found on few spots on earth. But, whatever his blood, the character, temperament, and point of view of the Panamanian are virtually the same everywhere. He is conceited, arrogant, lazy, and weak in physique. For centuries the people have been content to live from the traffic across the isthmus, to cull a livelihood from those who passed from ocean to ocean, and to neglect their country’s resources. In the interior they have degenerated into listless, abjectly poor, hook-worm-infested, undernourished, unspeakably miserable creatures whose lives are as aimless as the scrawny, tick-ridden cattle, and whose intellects are scarcely greater than those of the beasts about them. In the cities the common people are hardly superior, as far as physical or moral conditions are concerned, and they are absolutely lacking in initiative, foresight, or ambition, save in playing politics or in securing a soft government job.

Of course there are exceptions. There are many decent, intelligent, progressive, up-to-date and industrious men who have the interests and the good of their country at heart; men who are honest and advanced in their ideas and who would be a credit to any land. But these are a woeful minority. And, moreover, even the best of the Panamanians are neither builders, creators, manufacturers, masters of industry—or even good business men. What few industries there are in Panama are run by Americans; all the leading stores are in the hands of foreigners and Hebrews. Chinese and East Indians control the bulk of the smaller shops, and even the coal-black negroes from the British and French West Indies outdo the native Panamanians as far as business ability and progressiveness are concerned.

Is it any wonder, then, that Panama is undeveloped, largely unsettled, backward, and poverty-stricken? Were it not for the canal and the Americans, the country would have been ruined long ago. The towns were pest-holes until our engineers stepped in and sanitized them. The country was always in debt until an American fiscal agent took charge of Panamanian finances and checked the wholesale robbery among the officials. Panama’s income is almost entirely derived from Americans and the canal, and without our aid and support the people could not even have won their independence or have maintained it afterward.

But there is not the least gratitude for what we have done. There is no more self-sufficient, egotistical, conceited man on earth than the average Panamanian; and while he is wise enough to know on which side his bread is buttered, he detests the Americans from the bottom of his heart, and particularly resents the fact that under American supervision the treasury cannot be looted at will by every political hanger-on, grafter, and protégé of the officials.

The stranger does not at first realize the true condition of affairs in the country, and is prone to take the Panamanians at their own valuation; for they are smooth talkers and prate loudly of their enlightenment, their progress, and their appreciation of the Americans. But, like all Latin Americans, they are born diplomats, and laud America publicly and curse her privately. Indeed, were it not for the ever-present power of Uncle Sam, the lives and property of Americans would be worth nothing in the republic; and, even as it is, crimes against Americans are whitewashed whenever possible.

Do not think from the above that the Panamanian is totally lacking in good qualities or redeeming features. He is intensely patriotic, he is fond of music and art, he is outwardly a polished gentleman, and while, as a rule, he has a streak of yellow in his make-up, yet individuals have shown time and time again that they possess a high degree of courage and self-sacrifice. On the whole, however, after one knows the Panamanians and has lived among them, one is rather sorry that Morgan did not make a clean job of it and wipe out all the inhabitants of Old Panama when he had the chance, or that old Mansvelt did not hold St. Catherine and from that vantage-point subdue the isthmus and add it to Britain’s domains.

Panama is as rich, as fertile, and as fair a country as in the days of its greatest prosperity—an almost virgin land of limitless forests, stupendous mountains, vast rolling plains, great rivers, luxuriant valleys, high table-lands, and untrodden wildernesses.

One may cross the isthmus by railway trains hauled by oil-burning locomotives or may steam through the canal on huge liners. One may whirl about Colon or Panama in motor-cars or may ride on trolleys. One may live luxuriously in the palatial Tivoli or Washington Hotel, and may find every convenience and comfort of New York in the shops; and from morn to night one hears the bustle and the hum of modern progress and activity. And yet, within a few hours of all this, within a hundred and fifty miles of the teeming towns and the up-to-date Zone, is a vast unknown territory, a land that the foot of no white man has ever trod, a district wherein dwell Indians as primitive as those who gazed in wonder at the ships of Columbus.

And, oddly enough, it was in this district, in Darien, that the first Spanish settlement was made on the isthmus. It was across this wild and untamed land that Balboa made his slow and difficult way to look upon the Pacific, and it was through the Darien jungles that Sharp and Dampier and their fellow buccaneers forced their way from the Atlantic to the Pacific on that marvelous “dangerous voyage.”

Darien has changed little since then. The jungles are as impenetrable as when the first Dons and the later buccaneers slashed through the tangle of creepers and vines. Within the forests dwell the same Indians as those Balboa fought and the same tribes that aided the pirates to attack the hated Spaniards. One may still find the Chokois garbed only in breech-cloths and wearing the strange wooden crowns described by Ringrose and Dampier. One may still see the Kunas wearing the palm-wood combs and the golden nose-rings that attracted the buccaneers’ attention and curiosity. And, just as in the days of Ringrose and his fellows, there are friendly or “tame” red men and wild Indians, or bravos, in Darien. As ever, the brown-skinned Chokois are friendly and peaceable, although as primitive as at the time of Balboa’s expedition, while the yellow-skinned Kunas are as implacable, as aloof, and as unapproachable as when they tore the cruel Lolonais limb from limb.

But in addition to these wild tribesmen, who never permit a white man or a strange red man within their territory, there are also “tame,” or, as the Panamanians say, “mansos” Kunas, descendants of those who helped and guided the buccaneers across the isthmus and were ever the allies of the pirates—or, for that matter, any enemies of the hated Dons.

Wonderful tales are told in Panama and Colon of the wild Kunas, or, as the people call them, “San Blas” Indians, of the forbidden district. It is said that they either kill whoever enters their land, or else slice off the soles of one’s feet and then turn one loose in the jungle; and the Panamanians, as well as the Chokois, are in deadly fear of them. As a matter of fact, while the Kunas do prevent strangers from entering the territory they control, which extends from the upper Chukunaque to the headwaters of the Bayano River, yet I doubt very much if they ever kill or even maltreat a white man. Personally I have gone into their forbidden district for a short distance, and have dwelt among the wild Kunas for a fortnight, and I was treated well and made many friends among them. But the bravos have seen the results of contact with civilized or supposedly civilized man, and they have no intention of permitting the native rubber-gatherers or gold-seekers to secure a foothold in their country. And when one has seen what association with other races does to the red men, one cannot blame the Kunas if they adopt stern measures to keep their tribe pure and undefiled.

Inhabitants of this same Darien are the true San Blas Indians, who have ever been confused with the Kunas, but are quite distinct—a peaceable, friendly tribe dwelling on the Atlantic coast and the neighboring islets. In the old days they were sworn friends of the pirates, and rendered every British freebooter inestimable aid, from the time of Drake to that of Patterson. As sailors they are unexcelled, and many buccaneer ships dropped anchor off the San Blas isles and picked up the stocky brown Indians to act as pilots on their forays up and down the coasts.

The buccaneers treated the Indians fairly wherever they met them, although no doubt their attitude toward the red men was due to selfish motives rather than to any sense of humanity or decency. They well knew how the Indians were treated by the Spaniards; they knew that by treating them kindly and fairly they could win their confidence and friendship and thus enlist them as allies against the Dons; and, most of all, they were compelled to depend upon them very largely for food.

But, whatever the reason, they never molested or disturbed the aborigines. Even when, as often happened, the Indians of some hitherto untouched locality attacked them, the buccaneers never retaliated. Instead, they endeavored to mollify the savages, made overtures of friendship, gave them presents, or, if they found it impossible to make peace with them, left the spot and the natives to themselves. In all their records there is not a single instance of the pirates’ maltreating or killing Indians except on occasions when the Dons had Indian friends who took part in battles against the buccaneers or in case of those who were the Spaniards’ servants.

As a result, the corsairs always were welcomed to the Indian villages; they always found refuge there in time of need; and the Indians gladly supplied them with game, grain, and vegetables, and even with canoes and guides. Indeed, without the guides and the craft supplied by the Kunas and Chokois, Sharp’s “dangerous voyage” could never have been accomplished, for it would have been out of the question for the buccaneers to cross the isthmus, to gain the Pacific, and to attack the Spanish fleet.

But even with the Indians’ help the feat was marvelous. When one attempts to follow their route to-day and sees the country through which they traveled, one realizes the odds against them. So dense is the jungle that in many places it is impossible to proceed a yard without cutting a way through the tangle of lianas, thorny bush, spiny palms, poisonous plants, and tangled, razor-edged saw-grass. There are deep, swift rivers, precipitous mountain sides, impassable ravines; and yet through this wilderness these daring men forced a way led by their Indian friends—and got through safely.

It is bad enough to cross Darien afoot in the dry season, with every convenience, but the pirates, three hundred strong, undertook the journey in the rainy season, April, and for provisions had only “four cakes of bread” apiece, while their equipment consisted of a fusee, a pistol, and a hanger each. In order that there might be no mistake and their fellows be taken for enemies, the company was divided into seven parties, each carrying a flag of a distinguishing color. With six Indians as guides the three hundred and twenty-seven men set forth. Through the jungle and up the mountains they toiled, fording or swimming the streams, often crossing the same river a dozen times, beset by noxious insects, filled with superstitious fears of monstrous fabulous beasts, constantly drenched with rain but never halting, never hesitating. Here and there they came to Indian villages which, according to descriptions by Ringrose and Dampier, were exactly like those one finds in Darien to-day, and everywhere the friendly Indians supplied them with plantains, cassava, corn, and game. At last, without the loss of a man, and with fifty Indians who had joined the expedition, they reached the Santa Maria (now Tuira) River and embarked in sixty-eight canoes supplied by the Indians.

But Ringrose says:

If we had been tired whilst traveling by land before, certainly we were in a worse condition in our canoes. For at a distance of every stone’s cast we were constrained to get out of our boats and haul them over sand or rocks or over trees that lay across and filled up the river, yea, several times over the very points of land itself.

All of which very vividly and precisely describes the conditions one meets when traveling in Darien to-day, as I know from personal experience.

And when at last they gained the broader reaches of the river and swept down upon the little frontier town of El Real de Santa Maria, and with fifty men took the fort despite its garrison of two hundred and sixty men (with a loss among the pirates of only one killed and two wounded), they found to their chagrin that they were just too late. Only three days previously the accumulated treasure from the Caña mine—over three hundred pounds of gold ingots—had been taken by ship to Panama, and El Real was as bare as old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

But the pirates had no mind to return empty-handed. The treasure had gone to Panama, and other riches were there, too, no doubt. So, tumbling into the frail dugouts, they started for the great city, nothing daunted, and, as already described in a previous chapter, boarded and captured the Spanish fleet, took possession of the flag-ship, and, transforming her into a pirate vessel, ravished the coast of South America, and eventually rounded the Horn, and reached the Caribbean in safety.

El Real is still in existence, and just below the present village one may yet see the crumbling ruins of the town Sharp and his men took at the conclusion of that terrible journey, through the jungle, from the Atlantic.

In the old days El Real de Santa Maria was an important outpost, the heavily guarded, stockaded repository of vast quantities of gold taken from La Caña and scores of other mines in the district; while to it from what is now Colombia were brought gold-dust and emeralds. But Sharp’s raid spelled the doom of Darien. The Dons, realizing that where pirates had once crossed others could find a way, felt that treasure was unsafe there; mine after mine was abandoned, in fear of piratical forays and owing to constant uprisings among the Indians; garrisons were withdrawn and towns deserted, and the once incredibly rich district was left to half-wild negroes and primitive red men. What settlements are there to-day are miserable, squalid holes; the inhabitants are lazy and shiftless, and while Darien’s forests are still dense with dyewoods, valuable timber, and medicinal plants, while its rivers still flow over golden sands, and while its mountains still hold fortunes in mineral wealth, it is for the most part an untamed, impenetrable wilderness.