In its prosperous days Porto Bello was every fall the scene of the great fair. This was one of the great fairs of the world. The merchants from Spain and Europe, Cuba and Santo Domingo brought their goods to Porto Bello, and at the same time the Spanish treasure fleet collected here for the purpose of starting on its trip to Spain. The merchants from Peru and all the western coast of South America, the western coast of Mexico and the Philippine Islands collected here for the purpose of purchasing from and exchanging with their confrères from the east. All the bullion, gold, silver and precious stones which had been collected at Panama during the year from these same places was now brought on pack mules across the Isthmus on the royal highway, and placed aboard the treasure fleet. The royal highway was not much used at other times; the ordinary route of travel across the Isthmus was north from Panama to Cruces on the Chagres River, and from the mouth of the river by sea to Porto Bello. But this thirty miles of sea trip exposed the traveler to possible capture by the buccaneers who infested these waters. The ordinary merchant, in ordinary times, was willing to take these chances, but when it came to the Imperial treasure collected for a whole year, and to the whole year’s supply of merchandise, they would not risk the attack of the buccaneers, but came across the old highway. Porto Bello rapidly lost its importance after the revolt of the Spanish colonies in the early part of the nineteenth century. There was no longer any treasure tribute to be shipped to Spain. The building of the railroad in 1855 entirely deprived Porto Bello of the little importance left it by the Spanish colonial revolution, and when we first occupied it, we found nothing but a fishing village of a couple of hundred natives, who lived by fishing and some agriculture. There was a very marked contrast between the squalid native and the carved stone building which made his residence. The walls of many of the public buildings and some of the more opulent private buildings are still standing, and are used by the natives. And the frowning old forts are in an excellent state of preservation. We placed a large force here which worked the quarry. At first our malarial rate was excessively high, but in a very few months malaria was controlled and the force here got along about as well as at the other places of employment. It was always the case that when our forces occupied a locality, for the first three or four months the malarial rate was high. Of course we could have avoided this if we had been notified two or three weeks beforehand and had sent up a sanitary force to do preliminary work, but such notification was not always possible in the exigencies of construction work.