The town is all gone now, saving the cathedral tower, where the sweet Spanish bells once chimed, and the little stone bridge, worn by so many mules' hoofs. There is dense tropical forest over the site of it, though the foundations of several houses may be traced, and two or three walls still stand, with brilliant creepers covering up the carved work. It is not an easy place to reach, for it is some six miles from new Panama, and the way lies through such a tangle of creepers, over such swampy ground, poisonous with so many snakes, that it is little visited. It can be reached by sea on a fine day at high tide if the surf be not too boisterous. To landward of the present Panama there is a fine hill, called Mount Ancon. A little to the east of this there is a roll of high land, now a fruitful market-garden, or farm of orchards. This high land, some five or six miles from the ruins, is known as Buccaneers' Hill. It was from the summit of this high land that the pirates first saw the city steeple. Local tradition points out a few old Spanish guns of small size, brass and iron, at the near-by village of El Moro, as having been left by Morgan's men. At the island of Taboga, in the bay of Panama, they point with pride to a cave, the haunt of squid and crabs, as the hiding-place of Spanish treasure. In the blackness there, they say, are the golden sacramental vessels and jewelled vestments of the great church of St Anastasius. They were hidden there at the time of the raid, so effectually that they could never be recovered. We can learn of no other local tradition concerning the sack and burning. [Illustration: NEW PANAMA] What old Panama was like we do not know, for we can trace no picture of it. It was said to be the peer of Venice, "the painted city," at a time when Venice was yet the "incomparable Queene." It could hardly have been a second Venice, though its situation on that beautiful blue bay, with the Andes snowy in the distance, and the islands, like great green gems, to seaward, is lovely beyond words. It was filled with glorious houses, carved and scented, and beautiful with costly things. The merchants lived a languorous, luxurious life there, waited on by slaves, whom they could burn or torture at their pleasure. It was "the greatest mart for gold and silver in the whole world." There were pearl fisheries up and down the bay, yielding the finest of pearls; and "golden Potosi"--the tangible Eldorado, was not far off. The merchants of old Panama were, perhaps, as stately fellows and as sumptuous in their ways of life as any "on the Rialto." Their city is now a tangle of weeds and a heap of sun-cracked limestone; their market-place is a swamp; their haven is a stretch of surf-shaken mud, over which the pelicans go quarrelling for the bodies of fish.