Isthmiana. Theodore Winthrop
the purity of the view is one of his beauty-destroying abodes. Those shabby, tiled buildings, those dirty church-spires, and huts like ant-hills surrounding, are Panama,— while a suburb more important than the parent city is represented by a few black spots upon the water, capacious edifices, that move to and fro with the surplus population of the town. At present the small peninsula upon which the town is built is washed by the tide; but when it has fallen, an unsightly reef spreads out on every side, much blasphemed by people who, under a vertical sun and with excoriated feet, walk over its worm-eaten surface. The town is, as we have said, situated upon a small point which terminates in the old Cyclopean sea-wall of the town, where there is a strong bastion, still mounted with some magnificent bronze guns, and serving after parching days as a delicious cool evening promenade for the people. This is Las Bovedas, or the Battery, which deserves a separate essay, so largely does it enter into the list of Panama pleasures and Panama occupations. Away to the north of the town sweeps in a beautiful crescent a smooth, white sand-beach, terminating in a wooded, rocky point, that looks back into the town. A few huts straggle along this, near the town, sheltered by a grove of cocoanut-trees, which serve as parasols or umbrellas, and, while their occasional droppings keep down the super abundant infant population, they at the same time accustom the more warlike to the dangers of a bombardment. Farther along the beach a species of tree grows close down upon the sand, a hedge protecting the land from the sea, but its verdure is traitorous; these are the poisonous manzanilla, the Upas, which our school-boy eloquence so much employed. Beyond the wooded point, another cove, though not so perfect in its form, commences; and here, overgrown with trees and weeds, and partially covered with the quick-forming rock of the country, are the scanty ruins that mark the site of old Panama, the city of that bold, adventurous spirit whose type was Pizarro, and suggested by the very sound of his name. Back of this, and between our view-point and the site of the old town, spread broad savannas, carpeted, like a park, with soft, close-shaven turf; the cattle of a thousand hills graze quietly over its undisturbed surface, and, when the sun blazes, can take refuge in some of the rich groves or close thickets of tropical shrubbery which are picturesquely scattered over its surface, or follow the scanty water-courses. Smooth and carefully kept, like the fair meadows of an English landscape, appear these natural grazing-farms; and respectable enclosed countries, with their walls and hedges and ditches, can offer no pleasure like a free gallop, this way and that, over the plains, when the cool breeze of evening is flowing down over the hills, and every breath bears healing. These llanos lead back to a confused collection of hills, small and conical, like, as a practical friend remarks, the mounds of a potato-patch, and thickly wooded to the top. Their look is as if a sea of land, tossed into irregular waves by a general irruption of diverse winds, had been suddenly petrified. The scene is new and individual.
As the boat made its way to the steamer, the sun, rising, would bring into view the golden crescent of the north beach, with its grove of graceful palms, and its background of dark, wooded hills. The solitary tower that marks the site of old Panama would show itself clearly against the dense vegetation that has enveloped the once famous city. The large islands drew up boldly against the bright horizon, and the small were green resting-places for the eye looking oceanward. The bastions and towers of the town have grown into a Mediterranean variety of outline, and the dark cloud that seemed to overhang it has resolved itself into Ancon Hill. In sharp contrast to the repose of the landscape is the scene on the deck of the steamer. The natives surround her with a flotilla of boats, to make prisoner every disembarking Californian with his plunder. These, squalid and brigand-like, hurry with the recompense of all their toils in view. Boxes of gold-dust are shoved about as of no value. There is confusion and objurgation. But the rising tide warns me that I must defer any further description of the Bay, and return to my journey.
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