St Anastasius, which was the most glorious building in
Spanish America. Its tower still stands as a landmark to sailors,
visible many miles to sea. The stones of it are decorated with defaced
carvings. Inside it, within the ruined walls, are palm and cedar trees,
green and beautiful, over the roots of which swarm the scarlet-spotted
coral snakes. The old town was never properly fortified. The isthmus
was accounted a sufficient protection to it, and the defences were
consequently weak. It was a town of merchants, who "thought only of
becoming rich, and cared little for the public good." They lived a very
stately life there, in houses hung with silk, stamped leather, and
Spanish paintings, drinking Peruvian wines out of cups of gold and
silver. The Genoese Company, a company of slavers trading with Guinea,
had a "stately house" there, with a spacious slave market, where the
blacks were sold over the morning glass. The Spanish King had some long
stone stables in the town, tended by a number of slaves. Here the horses
and mules for the recuas were stabled in long lines, like the stables of
a cavalry barrack. Near these were the royal storehouses, built of
stone, for the storage of the gold from the King's mines. There were
also 200 merchants' warehouses, built in one storey, round which the
slaves slept, under pent roofs.

Outside the city was the beautiful green savannah, a rolling sea of
grass, with islands of trees, cedar and palm, thickly tangled with the
many-coloured bindweeds. To one side of it, an arm of the sea crept
inland, to a small salt lagoon, which rippled at high tide, at the back
of the city. The creek was bridged to allow the Porto Bello carriers to
enter the town, and a small gatehouse or porter's lodge protected the
way. The bridge is a neat stone arch, still standing. The streets ran
east and west, "so that when the sun rises no one can walk in any of the
streets, because there is no shade whatever; and this is felt very much
as the heat is intense; and the sun is so prejudicial to health, that if
a man is exposed to its rays for a few hours, he will be attacked with a
fatal illness [pernicious fever], and this has happened to many." The
port was bad for shipping, because of the great rise and fall of the
tides. The bay is shallow, and ships could only come close in at high
water. At low water the town looked out upon a strip of sand and a mile
or more of very wet black mud. "At full moon, the waves fre