Within the walls of the city there was a cathedral of imposing magnitude and towering splendor. There were also eight monasteries, massive buildings, occupied by the religious orders, and abundantly supplied with works of art. The broad avenues were lined with two thousand mansions of the wealthy; and five thousand smaller houses and shops crowded the more busy streets. The most imposing block in the city was what was called the Genoese Warehouses. These belonged to a company who had enriched themselves by the slave trade. An immense number of horses and mules were used in transporting goods across the isthmus, from one ocean to the other. These were kept in long rows of stables admirably arranged. The products of the mines of gold and silver were melted down into solid bars called plate or bullion, and in that form were sent to the Old World. The city was surrounded with rich plantations and highly artistic gardens. “Panama was the city to which all the treasures of Peru were annually brought. The plate fleet, laden with bars of gold and silver, arrived here at certain periods, brimming with the crown wealth, as well as that of private merchants. It returned laden with the merchandise of Panama and the Spanish main, to be sold in Peru and Chili; and still oftener with droves of negro slaves that the Genoese imported from the coast of Guinea to toil and die in the Peruvian mines. “So wealthy was this golden city that more than two thousand mules were employed in the transport of the gold and silver from thence to Porto Bello, where the galleons were loaded. The merchants of Panama were proverbially the richest in the whole Spanish West Indies. The governor of Panama was the suzerain of Porto Bello, Nata, Cruz, and Veragua. The bishop of Panama was primate of the Terra Firma and the suffragan to the archbishop of Peru. The district of Panama was the most healthy of all the Spanish colonies, rich in mines, and so well wooded that its ship-timber covered with vessels both the northern and the southern seas. Its land yielded full crops, and its broad savannas pastured innumerable herds of wild cattle.”[A] [Footnote A: Monarchs of the Main, vol. ii. p. 159.] Such was the city and province which had fallen into the hands of this gang of pirates. They found the booty, notwithstanding all the Spaniards had removed, rich beyond their most sanguine expectations. The stores were still crowded with goods of great value. Wine, spices, olive oil, silks and cloths of every variety of fabric were found in great abundance. The magazines were amply supplied with corn and other provisions.