Isthmiana/The Funcion

by Theodore Winthrop

The Funcion

Penonomé, from its situation near the mountains, is recognized as head-quarters by the Indians of the interior, who, though retaining their own independent life, and inhabiting their own pueblos, come down once or twice a year, on the great festive occasions of the Church, to confess and pay their nominal taxes. Their alcaldes are appointed by the government, and the priests retain some power over their superstitions; but besides this they seem to have little connection with their Spanish neighbors, except in the barter of their productions for goods. Manchester has penetrated even here, and all the native cotton fabrics are reproduced so faithfully by English operatives, and are so much cheaper, that the domestic manufactures have nearly ceased. The shawls (rebosos) of the women, of a peculiar and not ungraceful pattern, are used for veils, as well as mantillas. These Indians have short, dumpy, but athletic figures, and clear, dark complexions, very black, straight hair, shaved short behind and on the top of the head, hanging in long elf-locks at the side, with a narrow coronet, or stiff wig, above the forehead. Their heads are very long and narrow; so much so, that I found it impossible to fit myself with a straw hat among the assortments of native manufacture they had brought to the fête. The women, like the men, are short and stout, none handsome, but with good, trusty faces. In the morning the alcaldes of all the villages appeared, marching down to pay their taxes, and be blessed by Padre Grimaldo. Much good, no doubt, the latter did them. These respectable functionaries were dressed for the occasion in their diplomatic costume, fossil British navy-coats, with skirts worse than those we are now wearing, decorated with an occasional button, old American militia uniforms, caricatures originally, as they all are, and one richly embroidered garment, once the pride of some French savant when he appeared as Membre de l’Institut. A few of them had hats as outlandish as their costume, and with several the most essential part of a full-dress toilet had been altogether omitted, and they were sans culottes. They were preceded and followed by a couple of bare-legged individuals, bearing each a long, slender ebony wand, acting as ushers of the black rod.

Our day passed pleasantly enough. When you have nothing else to do in the tropics, you can always eat an orange; but we were not reduced to this of necessity. The nearness of the serrated mountains, with their supporting ridges sloping off to the plain, gave a grandeur to the view. We lounged about the village, chatted with the young ladies, laughed at their beaux, who were rigged out in antiquated black suits, and with queer hats, visited the perpetual fandangos, where a strumming was kept up varied by an occasional bit of doggerel verse in the time of the melody. Our approach was a signal for a fresh burst of an improvisation such as this: “Here come two noble English gents. Rata-tat rat-a-bump slam bang bumpo. They have their pockets full of pence. Rat-a-tit-a-tit cling clang thumpo. They’ll give us some, and we’ll be richer, enough to buy five bowls of chicha. Viva, viva los Señores Ingleses,. clink-a-clink rat-a-tat thump-a-dido.” The great lion of the festivity was the exhibition of fire-works that evening. Our house was most conveniently placed for seeing. They were ushered by an insane rattling of drums and bells, and numberless volunteered feux-de-joie on the part of the boys. The display of rockets, candles, serpents, &c. was as much as one of our Fourth of July affairs would have been. The finale was religious and grand; from the trefoil window of the church, supposed to represent Noah’s ark, a fiery dove issued, and, finding no rest for the sole of its foot on the wire, it ran along, it returned to the church, and, immediately issuing with a fiery olive-branch in its mouth, ran forward on another wire to a large lithographed picture of the Virgin, surrounded by wheels, candles, and serpents; it lighted this, and the whole went off in a blaze of glory, and the blessed Virgin was translated to the celestial regions in a mantle of flame.

Altogether I was delighted with Penonomé and its funcion. The conventional notions of morals and manners of the people were different, perhaps, from my own. Their easy apathy in delays and difficulties was an example in practice of the perfect and sublime nonchalance necessary to the man who will roll through the world teres atque rotundus, gathering none of the moss of local prejudice, nor fixing his countenance into a stare of gazing wonderment at new developments of human vanity, such as he has seen at home. It is charming to discover, from actual experience, that women are fair and women are false, that men are wise and men are fools everywhere; that there is just as much hospitality in the heart of a South American, who makes you free of his banana-patch, or a Shoshokie Indian, who offers you a cake of grasshopper paste, or pulls you a handful of boiled salmon out of his pot, as has your metropolitan friend at his dinner of canvas-backs and Clicquot, or his supper of terrapins and toddy. So I regretted the departure from Penonomé, (name of melody) embosomed in cocoa-palms and visited by fresh breezes from the mountains in the morning, and from the sea in the evening. I regretted, too, leaving behind my companions, who were still to remain some days.

Mr. José Dimas, the son of our cook, was induced to accompany me as guide. He was mounted upon a sorry nag, a nag which soon lay down in the road. José had evidently been prepared for some such event, and had probably only desired to appear in the village as a caballero on his travels. He very soon made an artistic pack of my traps, with thongs of bark, and led off at a jog-trot, putting Bungo to his mettle, and obliging me to keep up an alternate battery of my spurs. We travelled for some hours through a thicket of small shrubs, and at last, striking another lovely savanna, saw afar a fair island upon its surface, an island of palms. Beneath their shade was the little village of Anton, now almost deserted for the attractions of the fete of Penonomé. Deserted too by those who had not shared in such gayeties, for three persons had died that day and had been carried out in the common bier to the common sepulchre at two shillings a head, — less than I paid for my dinner! Indigestions are very common, and the pleurisy, particularly at this season, carries off multitudes of these people of little vitality. While I breakfasted on some capital roasted plantains, some inky clouds came pouring down from the mountains; in a few minutes a small stream near the village became a broad, deep river. There was no more travelling that day. Among the feathery branches of the cocoanut-trees the smooth green and brown nuts looked most tempting. It is no easy thing to climb a stalk as smooth as a liberty-pole of eighty feet, but a young athlete of the village, stripping and tying his feet together around the trunk, worked himself up and supplied me with occupation in imbibing milk and scraping the cream.

The night was exquisite; and in the violet dawn, we found the river just passable. The dry, ferruginous soil of the savannas had absorbed the rain; its effects were only perceptible in the brilliancy of the short grass. This savanna of Chirie we were now traversing is one of the most celebrated in the country, and the neighborhood of the mountains affords a refuge for cattle in the dry season. Over the whole expanse of the plain, cattle were grouped as buffalo on our prairies. Enormous herds would rush by, followed by some wild horseman whirling his lasso. O the glory of a gallop over these plains! Even Bungo was aroused to some degree of spirit. How the soul of the solitary traveller over these boundless lands expands, and goes leaping over the sweeping undulations! With what utter scorn one remembers that his view was once checked by brick walls built by the paltry efforts of men! Why, you might put all the cities in America within the circuit of my vision!

We left the savanna and turned off among high, bare sand-hills. A strange roaring had been in the air; I suddenly turned sharp round a high hill, and there was the great swell of the blue Pacific bursting upon a glittering beach of sand. A precipitous range of hills rose jutting above; we rode rapidly along, for the rising tide warned us that the jutting bluffs would soon be impassable. I rode for three hours on the smooth, hard beach; the glare was terrible. Never have I made the sea my own so grandly. The high shore range shut me totally off from land or the thought of land. The great crashing surges came down eternally; it was with great difficulty, and some danger of being swept away that we were able to pass the last projecting points, where the surf was already dashing violently. Then we turned off to the little village of San Carlos, to wait until another fall of tide should allow us to pass the remainder of the beach at night. Some large herds of cattle and swine were already encamped for the same purpose; as the darkness came on, their herdsmen surrounded them with a circle of watch-fires. The sunset was grotesquely splendid; a great pink lizard, with a short tail, was seen escaping from a monstrous vampire, who himself was chased by Macbeth’s witches.

It was almost midnight before we were able to pursue our way. The heavy surf was quieted, and the broad sea lay motionless under the glow of the stars. The air palpitated with starlight; light seemed to be reflected, too, from the sea, where the images of the stars were broadened by the shifting surface. We soon overtook the cattle crowded in the narrow space between the hills and the sea-shore, hurrying along, goaded by the herdsmen; as a little larger wave would plash more heavily on the sand, the whole black mass would sway tumultuously away like a crowd of men in a panic. It was a strange, wild sight by the dim light. The pigs were in advance long before we saw them we could hear their multitudinous sound, mingled with the noise of horns and the shouts of their drivers. They scuffled along in a black phalanx, as a black mist on the hill-side. We passed them, and were soon in the great night again.

Along the white path of the beach we could not miss our way, but when we reached the forest again, we must await the morning. I slung my hammock under a dense tree, and, wrapping myself in my poncho, soon closed my eyes to the stars that twinkled through the branches. Apropos of sleeping under a tree, they tell a story in Panama of a man who had committed a murder; he had escaped pursuit and wandered away into the recesses of the forest; when the heat of the day came on, he lay down under the shade. Here the vengeance of God overtook him; the tree was the poisonous manzanilla, the upas, and he was found there a swollen and blackened corpse.

I had not long to wait for the dawn. It revealed to me one of the most exquisite spots I have ever seen. My sheltering tree was in the middle of an exquisite glade sparkling with dew. High mountains enclosed it on all sides. To the right the Cerro di Chame, whose steep front had terminated the beach, rose in a verdant slope, its side sprinkled with huts like Swiss chalets; on the other hand, the, main ridge of the Isthmus overhung, wooded with immense trees up to the foot of a bold, towering crag. Each little cabin in this lovely glade had its own group of orange and cocoa-nut trees, each its own unenclosed space of the undulating greensward, each its own view of the massive mountains. Here my journey culminated; and when a beautiful Daphne issued from one of the houses to pluck her dewy head-dress of oleanders and her refined morning repast of oranges, my resolution nearly gave way; what could civilization offer like this? On these noble plains, one pest of the tropics, the insects that infest the forests, are removed.

Now commenced the real difficulty of the journey. Our road was a mountain path over a succession of rocky ridges, where the rains had washed away everything except great boulders, over which the unshod feet of Bungo, accustomed only to a carpet of turf, were to clamber. A broad path was kept clear through the impenetrable forest. Wonderful views opened, from time to time, over the sea and the islands. This was a trip of fatigue; all that was not mud was big stones. José Dimas plodded steadily along, travelling much more rapidly over the stones and through the deep mud than my horse could do. This was the Camerio Real, and, like royalty in America, it was in decay. I endeavored to indoctrinate José with a respect for internal improvements, should he ever be a man in power. About three o’clock I rode into the muddy village of Capeira, and asked lodging at the best house I could find. Victor Fernandez, my host, was a gentleman, and his housekeeper prepared me an admirable meal of things I sent out to buy. Panthers were very abundant, and Fernandez had himself offered a bounty on their heads, which had produced seven.

The next day was a weary one. Even in the worst spots of the Cruces Road I had never seen anything to compare with the profound mud and the slippery stones that my beaten horse had to pass. I had still maintained that the hill-side above the entrance of the pass of Thermopylae was the worst bit of road in the world, but now I yielded. There were alleys, too, worn in the clay soil by torrents of rain. From one, on entering alone, I could extricate myself only by digging my hands deep in the side and allowing my horse to pass out under me, while I hung suspended. The rascal, who had seemed utterly exhausted, tried to escape; but fortunately I was behind and José before in the alley, and he was again mounted to be again belabored. At last all our troubles ended; the forest was passed, no more mud, no more stones, but again a beautiful Llano, with its amphitheatre of distant mountains. The Lu Chorrera, famed for its beautiful girls, received me, and in the house of the priest, my hammock slung in the breeze, I saw Bungo limp off, with worn hoofs and battered knees, to repose upon the grass. I rested. They gave me a supper in the style of the country, with a capital dish of rice, sprinkled with small crabs, and highly seasoned with ahi.

On the evening of the next day I rode down to the landing, over a beautiful, undulating country, and when the tide rose enough to cover the roots of the mangroves, I embarked in, not on, a bungo, and by the soft moonlight was wafted along among small islands, till dawn and the freshening breeze wafted me back to the semi-Americanized life of Panama. I had seen and loved the pastoral life of the tropics, and I sighed as I looked down upon. the bay once more, though soon my unreal life upon its shores was to terminate. And without regret I returned from the dreamy Pacific to the restless, burdened waves of the Atlantic Sea.