slitable for navigation. He advised the building of a warehouse at Cruces where goods to be shipped on the Chagres could be stored. Besides this, he advised that a road be constructed from Panami to Cruceso
While plans for the proposed road were being discussed, the Spanish crown ordered further investigations of the possibility of establishing a Chagres trade route, By 1533, probably influenced by the Peruvian conquest, the Chagres was in regular use. Three years later a royal decree instructed Panama to erect a warehouse at Cruces and to make it a way-station. Meanwhile a road, extending some 18 miles, had been built from Panama to Cruces
If 16th century accounts can be believed, passengers and
freight using the Cruces Trail were transported over the road in mule trains of 500 animals. Trips to Cruces were usually made at night so as to avoid the sun's heat. The trail was well paved for nearly its entire length. Paving was done with well rounded field stones, four to eight inches in diameter. On hillsides the field stones "might be
8
bound in with a border and crossbars of rough blocks.8
Hussey "Spanish Colonial Trails," $12, $86, 69; Cole in de
documents inditos, 1st Series, XLI $34535$; Clarence H. Haring, Trade and Navigation between S and the Indies in the time of the Hapabur s abridge 1918), 1 2; Haykluyt, op cit., I, 59l51. Rubio states that the road was built about 1530 (Angel Rubio, "In the Wake of the Chagres, the river that linked the Oceans, Americas, VI (October 19$6), 17.) Philip Means also believes that the read dates from about 1530. (Philip A. Means, The Spanish Main, Focus of ~ 192-1700 ew York 193 7, &6) Most of this important colonial trail is still in existence, although the first
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