Panama when first known to the Spaniards, in the early part of the sixteenth century, was a thickly inhabited country, peopled by a mild-mannered Indian population, who lived principally by agriculture. Las Casas makes the statement that during the twenty years in which Pedrarias governed Panama he caused the death of three million Indians. I am inclined to think this a very great exaggeration, but it is evident from the accounts one reads of Balboa’s expeditions that there was a considerable population in the country. As day after day he makes marches from town to town, Balboa describes getting supplies from these towns, and that he was able to procure from five hundred to a thousand porters for carrying the baggage of the expedition. In every town he secured some gold, and none but a very populous country could have furnished the supplies of men and amounts of gold which he describes. The Republic of Panama is something over half the size of the state of Alabama, containing some 31,571 square miles of territory, and is divided into two parts near its center by the Panama Canal. The western half contains at present all the population of the Republic. The eastern half has no population at all, with the exception of a few wild Indians. In Balboa’s time this eastern half was thickly populated, and contained most of the inhabitants. Columbus looked upon Panama as the richest portion of his American discoveries, particularly from a gold-producing standpoint, and the Spaniards generally shared this opinion. This was such a widespread belief that the country was known as Castilla del Oro. The importance of Panama was vastly increased by the discovery and conquest of the Inca empire about 1530. Vast quantities of gold and silver bullion passed through Panama on its way to Europe. It seems to be an historical fact, mentioned by Prescott and other writers, that Pizarro exacted from the Inca emperor, Atahuallpa, for his ransom, a room full of gold, the dimensions of which are stated as being twenty-two feet long, seventeen feet wide and nine feet high. An adjoining room of somewhat smaller dimensions Atahuallpa agreed to fill twice over with silver. Such quantities of bullion were introduced into Europe as had never before been dreamed of, and prices rose to what was then considered an extraordinary figure. The city of Panama became the commercial metropolis of the western hemisphere. The highway between Porto Bello and old Panama became a road over which there was a constant stream of people traveling. All the merchants, officials and colonists going to Peru, western Mexico, and the Spanish possessions in the East Indies used this route, and there was a steady and constant stream of such people going between the colonies and mother country.