Its heavy walls show that it was planned for defense but the Spaniards abandoned it] [Illustration: _Photo by Burtis & Elliott_ THE RUINED TOWER OF SAN AUGUSTINE] The country round about Panama was then, and still is, arable and well-fitted for grazing. The rural population was but small, more meager indeed than one would think would have been necessary for raising vegetables for so considerable a town. In the back country were great numbers of Cimmaroons, or escaped slaves who are described as living in communities, ruled over by a black king. They went naked and were armed with bows and arrows, spears, darts and machetes. They lived on plunder and as when captured were they killed, or, at the best, enslaved anew, they fought with great desperation. Merchandise trains were their chief victims, though they often raided cattle ranches, or cut off individuals in the outskirts of the city. The English supplied them with weapons and could always be sure of their aid against the Spaniards, who had been their masters and whom they hated. The harbor was wretched, useful only for small vessels which at high tide could come straight to the seawall, being left there by the receding tide, high and dry, so that by quick action they could be unloaded before the waters returned. A very considerable part of the food of the town was fish brought thither by Indians from Taboga and nearby islands. Such was the town which Morgan raided. Because of the colossal disaster which befell it, a disaster without parallel since the days when the Goths and Vandals swept down over the pleasant plains of Italy, there has been a tendency to magnify the size, wealth and refinement of Panama at the time of its fall. But studied calmly, with no desire to exaggerate the qualities which made it so rich a prize, Panama may fairly be described as a city of about 30,000 people, with massive churches, convents and official buildings of masonry, with many stately houses of the type esteemed luxurious in the tropics, and peopled largely by pure-blooded Spaniards of the better type. It was too early a date for the amalgamation of races now so much in evidence on the Isthmus to have proceeded far, and the ancient records show that the Spaniards of substance in the town had mainly come thither from Seville.