arched his
small force across the Isthmus, which then presented greater
difficulties to his passage with cannon and munitions of war than
Cortez encountered in his march to Mexico. Like Cortez in his first
expedition, Morgan met with no opposition in his first visit to Panama,
but, with his men, lived at free quarters in rioting and debauchery,
committing those atrocities that pirates alone can commit, until, their
appetites and their passions being satiated, they returned to the Gulf
coast, taking with them the plunder of a city which was then the
depository of the treasures drawn from South America. They returned a
second time to Panama, as Cortez did to Mexico. This time they met with
resistance, but they carried the town by assault, and devoted it to
utter destruction. Their efforts were seconded by a terrible
earthquake, from which the people fled, and built a new city at a
distance of a few miles from the ruins.

For more than two hundred years the rank vegetation of a tropical
forest has been driving its massive roots beneath its foundations, and
yet the ruins of Panama still bear the marks of having once been a city
of much magnificence. Two massive stone bridges, a pavement, diverse
broken walls, and a solid tower standing up above the tops of the tall
forest-trees, proclaim the incontrovertible fact that the traces of a
large city can not be altogether blotted out in the course of a few
centuries.

Morgan has never gratified the world with a narrative of his
adventures, nor has any of his gang enlightened us with a history of
the conquest of Panama, nor has any Saxon bishop Lorenzana yet been
found so lost to all moral sense as to commend the piety of such
infamous men. And yet, in the boldness of his enterprise, in the
courage of its execution, in the amount of plunder realized, in
military talent and prowess, Morgan the pirate was incalculably
superior to Cortez the hero.

[41] CORTEZ, _Letters_, p. 111.

[42] Ibid.

[43] _Diaz_, p. 247.

[44] _Essai Politique_, vol. ii. p. 172.

[45] This is a little too strong a statement, considering that
there never was and never could be a cellar at Mexico.

[46] The naked negro alcalde mentioned in Chapter XII. was also
seated on a leather cushion.

[47] This is not all fancy. No people in the world show more
profound reverence to the aged or deference to their chiefs than
the North American