TOPUGBAPHY OF PANAMA 323 



sap of the jagua (gorn'pa americana), which keeps the skin cool. Their language 

 is a sort of singsong, in which each sentence is followed by a long pause. The 

 numerical system is vigesimal, as in Aztec, and may possibly be due to Nahua 

 influences. 



Topography. 



The " city " of Castillo dc Austria, founded on the Rio Chiriqui-mula (Crica- 

 maula), or Rio de Guaymi, during the first years of the conquest, soon disappeared 

 without leaving a trace of its former existence. The district continued to be 

 inhabited exclusively by Indians till the beginning of the present century, when 

 some negroes from the Yieja Providencia and San Andres islands settled on the 

 Chiriqui coast and neighbouring islands and gradually spread round the whole 

 islet. Boca del Tore, their largest station, had in 1883 a thriving population of 

 about 500, almost exclusively coloured. It lies in Colon Island over against the 

 Isla Bastinientos, the Provision Island of the English, where passing vessels call for 

 bananas, yams, and other supplies. 



On the mainland the chief trading-place is Gobrante, at the head of the navi- 

 gation of the Chiriqui-mula, whence a difficult track leads through the Miranda 

 valley over the cordillera down to the plains of David. An easier route runs 

 farther west from French Bay through a pass near the Cerro Horqueta. David, 

 capital of the Chiriqui department, stands within 12 miles of the Pacific on a 

 grassy plain flanked on the north by the superb cone of Chiriqui. Some twelve 

 miles farther west the hamlet of Alanje is all that remains of the ancient capital of 

 the countr}^ a famous market-place on the trade route between Guatemala and 

 Panama. 



Farther on Bugahita, near the village of BugaJ)a, is noted for the discovery of 

 numerous guacas, old graves full of gold ornaments, which in 1860 gave the Chi- 

 riqui district a temporary renown as a new Eldorado scarcely inferior to that of 

 California. But it was soon found that of every twenty or twenty-five graves not 

 more than one contained gold or copper objects, chiefly figures of animals, especi- 

 ally frogs, evidently amulets worn by the nitives. Treasures to the value of about 

 £40,000 were unearthed by some 1,500 searchers, who, after exhausting the supply, 

 quitted the district. 



Nata, or Santiago de los Cahalleros, is one of the oldest settlements in America, 

 dating from the year 1512, some time before the very name of Mexico was known 

 in Europe. It lies on the Rio Chico near its mouth in Parita Bay, at the western 

 extremity of the Gulf of Panama. 



The famous city of Panama, which gives its name to this gulf, to the isthmus 

 and the whole province, was not originally founded on its present site. In 

 1518, when Pedrarias de Avila transferred the capital from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific side, he selected a spot at the mouth of the little Rio Algarrobo, which 

 enters the bay or inner basin at the point where the gulf develops its extreme 

 convex curve towards the north. For 150 years this first Panama, founded on 

 the site of an Indian village of that name, enjoyed a monopoly of the trade of the 



