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TYPICAL NATIVE HUT IN PORTO BELLO DISTRICT

For that quality you must look to its past, for it figured largely in the bloody life of the Isthmus in the 16th century. It was founded by one Don Diego de Nicuesa, who had held the high office of Royal Carver at Madrid. Tired of supervising the carving of meats for his sovereign he sailed for the Isthmus to carve out a fortune for himself. Hurricanes, treachery, jealousy, hostile Indians, mutinous sailors and all the ills that jolly mariners have to face had somewhat abated his jollity and his spirit as well when he rounded Manzanillo Point and finding himself in a placid bay exclaimed: “Detengamonos aqui, en nombre de Dios” (Let us stop here in the name of God). His crew, superstitious and pious as Spanish sailors were in those days, though piety seldom interfered with their profanity or piracy, seized on the devout invocation and Nombre de Dios became the name of the port.

The town thus named became for a time the principal Spanish port on the Caribbean coast and one of the two terminals of the royal road to Old Panama. But the harbor was poor, the climate sickly, for the town was shut in on the landward side by mountains which excluded the breeze. It came to be called the Spanish Graveyard. Children died in infancy, and Spanish mothers sent theirs to Cruces to be reared. Difficult of defense by either land or sea it was menaced alternately by the Cimmaroons and the English, and in 1572 Sir Francis Drake took it by assault but gained little profit by the adventure, in which he nearly lost his life. Warned by this, and by other attacks, a distinguished Spanish engineer was sent to examine Nombre de Dios with other Caribbean ports.