INHABITANTS OF PANAMA. 321 



Of the 1,500 and 1,340 species of molluscs belonging respectively to the 

 Caribbean Sea and Panama waters, less than 50 are common to both groups. Even 

 the land animals differ in the same way. The chrysothru', a species of monkey 

 peculiar to the Chiriqui district, will not even live on the opposite coast. 



Inhabitants. 



Most of the inhabitants of Panama, like their Central American neighbouis, 

 are a mixed people, the various elements being the Spanish, Indian, and Negro. 

 Since the abolition of slavery Jamaica has never ceased to send blacks and mulattos 

 to the isthmus, where many have settled as petty dealers and farmers. In several 

 villages on the Atlantic side they are in a majority, and to them is due the spread 

 of the Anglo-Spanish jargon now current along the seaboard. 



Some of the aborigines have preserved their physical type, customs, and speech. 

 Thus the Guaymi, that is " Men," keep somewhat aloof, mostly in the upper 

 Miranda valley, in the western part of the province. These Indians, whose chief 

 tribe bears the name of Yalientes, belong to the same family as the Costa Ptican 

 Talamancas, and were certainly at one time more civilised than crt present. They 

 are probably the direct descendants of those natives who before the conquest 

 carved symbolic figures on the face of the rocks, and deposited gold ornaments in 

 their guacas or graves. One of their chiefs pretends to descend from Montezuma, 

 a name which they have evidently learned from the whites, and to which they 

 now attach a certain national sentiment. 



The religion of the Guaymi is a pure system of terrorism. Every sudden noise 

 startles him, and is attributed to some wicked demon, who has to be conjured by 

 the wizard and propitiated by offerings. When the sick seem to be past recovery 

 they are taken to the forest and abandoned with a calabash of water and a few 

 bananas. After death the body is exposed on a platform for a year, when the 

 remains are cleansed and deposited in a bundle in the " family vault." 



According to Pinart the Guaymi still number about 4,000, although in 1883 

 the Muoi tribe had been reduced to three persons. On the southern dope of the 

 chain lived the Dorasques, a distinct tribe with a different language, but now all 

 but extinct. The Seguas, called Mexicans or Chichimecs by the early Spanish 

 writers, were, in fact, more or less barbarous Nahuas met by Yasquez de Coronado 

 on an affluent of the Chiriqui lagoon ; but the locality can no longer be identified. 



East of the Chiriqui range, and thence to the San Bias isthmus, all the abori- 

 gines have disappeared, either extirpated or absorbed in the surrounding Mestizo 

 populations. But native tribes still survive in the eastern districts, on the shores 

 and islands of San Bias Bay, and in the Bayano, Tuyra and Atrato basins. But 

 these Indians have not preserved the tribal traditions, and they no longer 

 remember the sway of the ancient Paparos or Darienes, Avhose name survives in 

 the eastern part of the isthmus, and who were probably related to the Quevas or 

 Cuevas mentioned by Obido y Yaldes and other early writers. 



Apart from the southern Chocos, whose affinities are with the Colombian 

 populations, the various Indian peoples of Darien, despite differences of speech. 

 54 



