CHAPTER XIII. Nombre De Dios

NOMBRE DE DIOS

Another sanitary district had to be established about twenty miles east of Porto Bello, at Nombre de Dios. Here we had a force of some two hundred men who dredged the sand that was used in making concrete for the locks at Gatun. The conditions were very much the same as at Porto Bello. There was a small native town of not more than one hundred people, on the old site of Nombre de Dios, and we found that to protect our own force we had to take charge of these natives, just as we did at Porto Bello.

Nombre de Dios has even a more romantic history than Porto Bello, and the name of Nombre de Dios is even better known in the wild history of the Spanish Main than is that of Porto Bello. It was founded about 1520, soon after the settlement of old Panama, and became the northern terminus of the paved royal highway leading from Panama. Afterwards, when Porto Bello was built, the highway forked about thirty miles south of Nombre de Dios, one branch leading to Porto Bello, and the other to Nombre de Dios.

The roadstead at Nombre de Dios was entirely open and exposed to the full force of the north wind, locally known as the “norther,” so troublesome along this coast during the winter months. It was so exposed that it was difficult for the Spaniards to fortify it. The fabulous amount of treasure which the Spaniards were bringing up from Peru rapidly became known throughout the world. The Spaniards, during their earlier colonial period, collected their treasure from time to time during the year, in preparation of the sailing of the fleet. For this reason, Nombre de Dios was constantly being threatened by adventurers of all nationalities, who frequented the seas washing the shores of the Spanish Main.

Drake, in his expedition of 1572, made a most romantic attack upon Nombre de Dios. With one hundred men in small boats he attacked the town and took the garrison entirely by surprise. They were driven in every direction and many captured. The Governor, with a handful of men, defended the palace where the gold and more valuable treasures were stored, with desperate valor, but the town and all other public buildings were in the hands of the English, and there seemed very little chance for the Governor and his few brave followers. The silver bullion, the accumulations of a year from the countries tributary to Spain in this part of the world, was in one of the buildings already in the hands of the English. Drake describes it as being piled in bars of solid silver, and states that the pile was some eighty feet long, twenty feet broad and ten feet high. The old Governor and his companions were still bravely holding the palace, and Drake led a charge in person. While they were battering in the main gate, Drake received a bullet wound in the head and fell to the ground unconscious. His men became demoralized, thinking that he had been killed, and though they had the prize entirely within their grasp, they fled to their boats, carrying with them the insensible form of Drake, and left to the defeated Spaniards the treasure which the English had gone through so much suffering and privation to possess.

The Spanish garrison was immediately reinforced from Panama. Though Drake remained with his ships concealed among the San Blas Islands in the beautiful tropical bay of San Blas, he never had another opportunity of surprising with any chance of success the fort and garrison of Nombre de Dios.

About a year later, however, he surprised and captured a treasure train on the royal highway coming across from Panama to Nombre de Dios. The fight took place just about where the royal highway to Porto Bello branches off from that to Nombre de Dios. Drake’s men after the capture were some fifty or sixty miles from their ships. There was no trail nor road of any kind leading in that direction, so that they could not take the pack mules. Drake therefore directed that the gold and most valuable treasure should be divided up among the men as much as each could carry, and that the silver and least valuable part of the treasure should be buried and concealed as well as it could be in the immediate neighborhood.

Drake and his men succeeded in getting to their ships safely with the treasure they had captured, and this was enough to pay the expense of their whole trip and besides make each one of them rich for life, according to the standards of that day. The Spanish garrison from Nombre de Dios was on the ground within a few hours after the capture of the pack train, and spent several days in searching for hidden buried treasure. They found a great deal, and thought they had found all that was left. About two weeks afterwards Drake and his men returned and dug up enough to give again to each man all that he could carry, but as this was principally silver, it was not so valuable as had been their previous load.

In 1598, Nombre de Dios, by order of the Spanish king, was abandoned and everything moved to Porto Bello. As I before remarked, our men were located right among the ruins of the old city of Nombre do Dios, and our sand-digging operations were carried on near the shore line right in front of the town. In the three hundred years since Nombre de Dios had been abandoned the harbor had silted up and filled in to a considerable extent. In excavating for sand our men found the frame of an old ship of considerable size ten or fifteen feet under the surface of the ground, and some two hundred yards from the present coast line. She was evidently an old Spanish ship that had been abandoned at the then shore line of the city of Nombre de Dios, and had gradually been covered by the action of the water with sand and silt.

The Spanish officers and soldiers of 1650 seemed to have lost the initiative and energy which they had so wonderfully exhibited two generations before in this same country under Balboa, Pizarro, Almargo, and other leaders of that stamp. But they did not lack bravery and dogged determination, when it came to the defensive, as was illustrated in the case of the Spanish Governor at Nombre de Dios, when summoned by Drake to surrender, although his condition was apparently hopeless. His courage and devotion were most unexpectedly rewarded by success, which he had not the slightest right to expect, due to purely accidental conditions.

This bravery and devotion of the Spanish cavalier was again illustrated eighty years later, when Sir Henry Morgan, the English buccaneer, stormed the works at Porto Bello. The circumstances were somewhat the same as above described at Nombre de Dios. The English stormed and carried one stronghold after another until nothing but the palace was left to the Spaniards. In the palace the Governor had placed the women and children, with himself and about ten men, and had barricaded all the entrances as well as possible. He steadily refused all summons which Morgan made on him to surrender. When the main door was battered down and Morgan entered sword in hand at the head of more than one hundred men, he found the old Governor standing with drawn sword, his ten men behind him and the women and children behind them. The Governor was even then a man of over sixty years of age. It was not the custom in those days for either Spaniards or buccaneers to ask or give quarter. Sir Henry Morgan is not ordinarily credited with much soft-heartedness even from the standpoint of a buccaneer. According to accounts, he was touched by the scene that presented itself to his view as he and his men poured into the court—the white-haired old Governor unflinchingly supported by his brave little garrison of ten men, and the frightened and crying women and children standing behind. By a gesture he waved back his men, and told the Governor that he wished to spare his life and the lives of those dependent upon him. Though his wife entreated the Governor to accept Morgan’s terms and pointed out to him the uselessness of resistance, as all the town and the forts were in the hands of six or seven hundred buccaneers, and that there were but ten Spaniards left, the doughty old Governor refused to yield and told Morgan that he was not placed there by his king to surrender, but to fight, and that if he wanted his sword, he (Morgan) would have to take it, as he would never yield it as long as he had a drop of blood left.

This is the only recorded instance that I know of in which Morgan was touched by the bravery of his enemy. But his patience now entirely exhausted, he gave the signal, and in a few moments the brave old Governor and ten of his brave men had gone to the land where the souls of soldiers, good and true, are known to go.

This picture has always affected me strongly. I have often stood on the ground and tried to rehabilitate the old court as it appeared that memorable May afternoon.