CHAPTER VIII
HOW THE ENGLISH FAILED TO TAKE NEW PANAMA
TWO years after the destruction of Old Panama, the city was rebuilt on a better site, six miles to the west. Here, on a rocky peninsula at the foot of Ancon Hill it received even better protection from shoals and coral reefs than at the former place, and was much nearer the islands of Naos and Taboga, that had always been the port for vessels of any size. These natural defenses were strengthened by stone walls so massive and well-armed with heavy cannon that they cost, even with slave labor, over eleven million dollars. "I am looking for those expensive walls of Panama," said the King of Spain, when asked why he stood gazing out of a palace window to the west. "They cost enough to be visible from here."
But those costly walls were to earn their keep, for they alone kept the bucaneers from overrunning Panama, and making it another Jamaica. Only seven years after Morgan left the Isthmus, the town of Porto Bello was plundered by a small gang of bucaneers, the garrison not daring to come out of the forts. Other raiders had already gone through the Straits of Magellan, but the favorite route of these later bucaneers was through the Darien region, by the same pass used by Balboa. The Darien Indians, glad to ally themselves with any enemies
