the town they were exposed to the guns of Castle
Gloria and Fort Jeronimo--the latter a strong castle built upon a
sandbank off the Guinea town. The constant population was not large,
though probably 300 white men lived there all the year round, in
addition to the Spanish garrison. The native quarter was generally
inhabited by several hundred negroes and mulattoes. When the galleons
arrived there, and for some weeks before, the town was populous with
merchants, who came across from Panama to buy and sell. Tents were
pitched in the Grand Plaza, in front of the Governor's house, for the
protection of perishable goods, like Jesuits'-bark. Gold and silver bars
became as common to the sight as pebbles. Droves of mules came daily in
from Panama, and ships arrived daily from all the seaports in the
Indies. As soon as the galleons sailed for Spain, the city emptied as
rapidly as it had filled. It was too unhealthy a place for white folk,
who continued there "no longer than was needful to acquire a fortune."

[Footnote 16: With reservations. See p. 13, _note_.]

[Illustration: PORTO BELLO
CIRCA 1740. SHOWING THE SITUATION AND DEFENCES OF THE CITY]

Indeed, Porto Bello was one of the most pestilential cities ever built,
"by reason of the unhealthiness of the Air, occasioned by certain
Vapours that exhale from the Mountains." It was excessively hot, for it
lay (as it still lies) in a well, surrounded by hills, "without any
intervals to admit the refreshing gales." It was less marshy than Nombre
de Dios, but "the sea, when it ebbs, leaves a vast quantity of black,
stinking mud, from whence there exhales an intolerable noisome vapour."
At every fair-time "a kind of pestilential fever" raged, so that at
least 400 folk were buried there annually during the five or six weeks
of the market. The complaint may have been yellow fever; (perhaps the
cholera), perhaps pernicious fever, aggravated by the dirty habits of
the thousands then packed within the town. The mortality was especially
heavy among the sailors who worked aboard the galleons, hoisting in or
out the bales of merchandise. These mariners drank brandy very freely
"to recruit their spirits," and in other ways exposed themselves to the
infection. The drinking water of the place was "too fine and active for
the stomachs of the inhabitants," who died of dysentery if they presumed
to drink of it. The town smoked in a continual steam of heat, unrelieved
even by the torrents of