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doled out flour and wine, and gathered, in return, jewels and bars of gold for their coffers. The merchants combined so that all might charge the same high price for food, and with the profits they built their cedar houses roofed with rosy tiles; they dressed their women in foreign silks and were followed about in the streets by bands of retaining slaves.

A company of Genoese slave dealers came to the city and built a large warehouse for their merchandise. In it were tiers of cages where the black men sat until they were brought into the light to be felt over and bargained for.

It was a lovely city, Panama. Two thousand great cedarn houses lined its principal streets, and farther from the center were five thousand smaller dwellings for clerks and messengers and paid soldiers of the King. Clustering in the outskirts were innumerable thatched huts where the slaves were quartered. In the center of the town were six churches, two convents, and a tall cathedral, all with full gold services and vestments heavy with jewels. Already two saints had lived and died in Panama—not major saints, perhaps, but of enough importance to make their bones valuable.

One whole section of the city was crowded with the houses and stables and barracks of the King. Here, one-tenth of all the produce of the land was stored, waiting for the next plate fleet, when it would be carried on donkey-back across the isthmus to be loaded on the ship. Panama was supporting the kingdom of Spain—paying for the