Fort Mill times. [volume] (Fort Mill, S.C.) 1892-current, 1921-03-24
PANAMA - WHERE EAST
SEEMS WEST.
The Republic Of Panama, which


was described in recent news dis
patches as experiencing strained
relations with the neighboring re-
public of Costa Rica over a boun-
Diary dispute, is the subject of the
following bulletin isued by the
National Geographic society from
Washington:
"The Isthmus Of Panama, which
now almost exactly corresponds
to the Republic of Panama, has
probably had as many thrills to
the square foot as any other sec
tion of the earth of similar size.
They have ranged from the igno-
bic to tho noble, from the drunk
en- debaucheries of bloodthirsty
pirates as they sacked the pros
porous cities of the country, to
the feelings Of Balboa as he stood
the first white man to view the
waters of the pacific, and those of
the American engineers who saw
the completion there of the
worlds greatest engineering feat.
And through it all large tracts of
the little country have remained
much as they were when Colum-
bus first set foot there in 1902,
and happy to find part of real
continent after seemingly INTERIM
Unable islands, named it Terra
Firme.'
Panama perpetrates one of the
greatest of geographic jokes on
those who visit it. 1t very con-
vincingly makes east west. From
Panama City the sun rises out of
the Pacific, which to most Amer
lean minds is the proper place for
setting suns only. And he who
sails through the canal from the
Atlantic to the Pacific travels not
from east to west, but from west
to east, or more accurately, from
northwest to southeast. One gets
the impression, as one writer has
phrased it, that there is some
thing crooked about this The
crookedness is found to be in the
isthmus which runs predomi-
.nantly east and west instead of
north and south, and in addition
makes double curve like the let
ter S, so that at one place the
Atlantic waters are actually west
.yof those of the Pacific.
I 1T may seem a far cry from
!. the lay of the land at Panama to
!: the South sea, but because of the
east and west trend of the 18TH
/; mus the popular name for that
huge, inland-dotted ocean has
largely taken the place of the
more nearly correct South Pa
citic.' When Balboa stood OH an
isthmian mountain crest in 1913
and discovered the great ocean
stretching off to the southwark
he naturally named it 'El Mar del
/Sur'-the South sea. A few days
later when he had won his way
to the newly discovered ocean he
Waded into it and made the sim
gularly modest claim for the king
OF Spain to sovereignty over the
sea and all lands and islands bor-
dering on it, from pole to pole,
until judgment day
'Since few years after Bal
boa's discovery the Isthmus Of
Panama-for long time called
Darien-has been the gateway for
commerce between the East and
West and between Pacific South
America and Europe. The old
city of Panama was founded as
the entry port on the Pacific side
in 1913, more than a hundred
years before the Pilgrims landed
in Massachusetts. Portobello,
known to all readers of pirate
tales, was the Atlantic port, and
between them was constructed a
paved trail. At the height of
Spanish colonial power gold and
silver from Peru were, carted
across the old trail like cordwood.
Such great wealth was an ir-
resistiblc attraction to the bucca-
neers who infested the Caribbean.
Time after time they swooped
down on the isthmus from their
strange island commonwealth
near Haiti. Old Panama was en-
trely destroyed in 1871 by such
ar expedition under the leader
ship of the notorious Henry Nor
gan, later Sir Henry. On other
occasions, Portobello, in spite of
its Formidable fortifications 1y.s