Читать книгу Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose онлайн

63 страница из 85

BULLOCK CART ON THE SAVANNA ROAD

MODERN INDIAN, DARIEN REGION

Note characteristic weapons—machete, javelin and shot-gun

“The Admiral without making any stay went on till he put into Puerto Bello, giving it that name because it is large, well peopled and encompassed by a well cultivated country. He entered the place on the 2nd of November (1502), passing between two small islands within which ships may lie close to the shore and turn it out (sic) if they have occasion. The country about the harbor, higher up, is not very rough but tilled and full of houses, a stone’s throw or a bow shot one from the other; and it looks like the finest landscape a man can imagine. During seven days we continued there, on account of the rain and ill weather, there came continually canoes from all the country about to trade, for provisions, and bottoms of fine spun cotton which they gave for some trifles such as points and pins.”

Time changes, and things and places change with it. What are “bottoms of fine spun cotton” and “trifles such as points”? As for the people whose houses then so plentifully besprinkled the landscape round about, they have largely vanished. Slain in battle, murdered in cold blood, or enslaved and worked to death by the barbarous Spaniards, they have given place to a mongrel race mainly negro, and of them even there are not enough to give to Porto Bello today the cheery, well populated air which the younger Columbus noticed more than 400 years ago.