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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prowling about Panama, by George A. Miller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Prowling about Panama
+
+Author: George A. Miller
+
+Illustrator: Alice Best
+ A. W. Best
+
+Release Date: February 9, 2012 [EBook #38815]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Alex Gam and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PROWLING ABOUT
+PANAMA
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE A. MILLER
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+ALICE AND A. W. BEST
+FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THE ABINGDON PRESS
+NEW YORK CINCINNATI
+
+
+Copyright, 1919, by
+GEORGE A. MILLER
+
+
+DEDICATED
+TO THE
+YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE EPWORTH LEAGUES
+OF THE
+CALIFORNIA CONFERENCE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER PAGE
+
+ FOREWORD 11
+
+I. WHERE THE PROWLING IS GOOD 13
+
+II. THE TRAIL OF THE PIRATES 26
+
+III. PICTURESQUE PANAMA 41
+
+IV. A CITY OF GHOSTS 55
+
+V. THE SPELL OF THE JUNGLE 65
+
+VI. LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 76
+
+VII. THE INTERIOR 93
+
+VIII. ECONOMIC WASTE 109
+
+IX. PANAMA AND PROGRESS 122
+
+X. KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 144
+
+XI. THE FAMILY TREE 160
+
+XII. LATIN-AMERICAN HEART 178
+
+XIII. THE CARIBBEAN WORLD 193
+
+XIV. THE PANAMA CANAL 214
+
+XV. PROWLING INTO THE FUTURE 235
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ PAGE
+
+The Faithful Mule is the Ship of the Jungle 14
+
+The Homeward Way at Nightfall 15
+
+An Empire in the Making 19
+
+A Few Good Roads on the Zone 21
+
+Church at Nata, Oldest Inhabited Town in New World,
+ Founded 1520 24
+
+The Jungle is the Place for Picnics 27
+
+Even Farm Cabins Are Picturesque in Costa Rica 30
+
+Ruins of Old Panama, the Most Romantic Spot in the New
+ World 33
+
+Indian Woman at the Fountain 36
+
+Baths--Wholesale and Retail 43
+
+Convent Door 46
+
+Official Lottery in Bishop's House, Panama 48
+
+Ruin of Famous Flat-Arch Church 52
+
+Eighth-Grade Room, Panama 53
+
+Convent Garden 56
+
+Romantic Old Convents Survive 58
+
+Ruined Tower at Old Panama 60
+
+Costa Rica Trapiche, or Sugar Mill 62
+
+Papaya Trees 66
+
+Bananas and Sugar Cane 68
+
+Cacao Pods 70
+
+Proposed Location for Rest Cure 73
+
+Picturesque Jungle Towns 78
+
+Tortillas are Staple 80
+
+Jungle Folk 81
+
+"The Cotter's Saturday Night" 82
+
+Church Bells of Arraijan, Cast 1722 85
+
+First-Grade Room, Panama 89
+
+The Beautiful Savanas of Costa Rica 95
+
+Shipping Costa Rica Vegetables to Panama 99
+
+Good Pineapples Grow Here 103
+
+Dead Timber in Gatun Lake Now Covered with Orchids 105
+
+Interior Meat Market 111
+
+The Flavor of Old Spain 112
+
+Taking the Rest Cure 113
+
+The Oxen Stage of Agriculture 115
+
+Wayside Sellers of Fruit 117
+
+The House Beside the Road 118
+
+Wireless at Darien 123
+
+Farm Grist Mill, Costa Rica 126
+
+Happy Kindergartners, Panama 129
+
+Young Costa Rica is Enterprising 131
+
+Wooden Sugar Mill and Its Maker 133
+
+Public Market, David 137
+
+Indian Boy Goes to School 145
+
+Washday in Costa Rica 147
+
+Riverside Plantation 151
+
+Jungle Products 154
+
+San Blas Indian Chief 161
+
+No Race Suicide Here 162
+
+Jungle Guide 164
+
+One Use for a Head 165
+
+Beggars and Cathedrals 167
+
+Far from the Madding Crowd 169
+
+Seawall Church and School, Panama 171
+
+Mandy Did Her Share 173
+
+The Canal Digger 173
+
+The Town Pump, Interior Village 175
+
+Wayside Cemetery in the Jungle 176
+
+Coconuts--So Good and So High 180
+
+Boiling "Dulce"--Crude Sugar 183
+
+Washing by the River 189
+
+Costa Rica Farm House 194
+
+Bananas Thirty Feet High 197
+
+San Blas Indians Have "Poker Faces" 198
+
+Where Styles Molest No More 201
+
+Chinese Always Start a School 205
+
+"Schooldays" 205
+
+Three in a Row 212
+
+Mother, Home, and--the Simple Life 212
+
+Construction Days in Culebra-Gailard Cut 217
+
+Gatun Spillway, Key to the Canal 224
+
+Cristobal Streets 227
+
+Fat Cattle of Cocle 228
+
+Enchanted Islands in Gatun Lake 231
+
+Panama Public Water Works, Interior Country 237
+
+A Jungle Cathedral 242
+
+Shoe-bills Are Small 248
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+The fine art of prowling may be achieved, but is more often a gift of
+those to the manner born. Professional globe-trotters are not prowlers.
+They are often the victims of their own sense of superiority. Personally
+conducted tours are little help to real prowling, and professional guides
+reduce the sight-seer to a machine for receiving "canned" information with
+gaping mouth, while with his free hand he extracts tips from his reluctant
+pocket.
+
+Prowling is an instinct, a sixth sense of locations and values. The
+prowler must have intuition and imagination and perseverance and
+historical perspective, but with these he must have something else--that
+inner vision that finds values in everything human. The expert explorer
+will find something interesting in Sahara, but almost any prowler will
+have a rare time in Panama.
+
+Probably no spot in the New World has served as the location of so many
+kinds of events and interests as this narrow neck of land between two
+continents. Brief histories of it have been well written, and the visitor
+should by all means read at least one of them. It remains for some seer
+yet to tell worthily the story of the four centuries that link the last
+discovery of the world's greatest explorer with the final achievement of
+the world's most skillful builders.
+
+Panama furnishes an epitome of history. Nearly everything that has ever
+happened anywhere in the world has had some counterpart or parallel in
+Panama, and of the coming results of the new forces now released on the
+Isthmus time alone can be the measure.
+
+This book makes no claims to consistency. Where contradictory
+characteristics abound and motives are much mixed, both sides may be
+faithfully set forth, but to reconcile them is a difficult matter. There
+will be no unified and consistent life on the Isthmus until the advancing
+civilization now there outgrows some of its present traits.
+
+Can one tell the truth about Panama and return to the Isthmus? That
+remains to be proven. Much depends on the spirit of the prowler. As well
+ask whether one can tell the truth about Chicago and be welcome to that
+metropolis. Probably Chicago would pay no attention to the comment, but
+Panama might take enough interest to notice.
+
+This is not a guidebook. Heaven forbid! It is merely a few notes of a
+prowler who found Panama interesting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WHERE THE PROWLING IS GOOD
+
+
+Panama is the great American curiosity shop. The first city founded by
+explorers in the New World, the oldest town in America inhabited by white
+men, the most conglomerate mixture of humanity on earth are in Panama. The
+bloodiest tale of modern history, the most romantic story of American
+exploration, the greatest engineering achievement of man all center in
+Panama.
+
+If there be any interest in congested and sweltering humanity, any concern
+for the problems of social uplift and personal reaction, Panama is the
+laboratory for study. The cleanest and healthiest towns on earth are on
+the Canal Zone, and the last word in shiftlessness and inefficiency is
+also here. Superstition and science, rascality and rhapsody, efficiency
+and squalor, graft and honor, all mixed and mingled--this is Panama.
+Jungle and plain, valley and coast, tropic heat and mountain paradise,
+fever-swamps and ideal sanitation, engineering success and life in the
+primitive open--these too are in Panama.
+
+Strange and mysterious traces are still found of the days when the gold of
+Peru was carried across the Isthmus on pack trains. Later the gold-seekers
+of California fought their way along the route of the present Canal and
+found ships on the west coast for the mines of Eldorado. If any survivors
+still live, they can tell stirring tales of the days when it was well
+worth a life to carry gold to Aspinwall.
+
+[Illustration: THE FAITHFUL MULE IS THE SHIP OF THE JUNGLE]
+
+It all began with Columbus himself when he sailed into Almirante Bay and
+thought that he had found in Chiriqui Lagoon the long-sought passage to
+India. What he really found, what was to follow his discovery, he could
+not have dreamed, adventurer that he was! Almirante (Admiral), Cristobal
+(Christopher), and Colon (Columbus) remain to-day to remind us of the
+illustrious explorer who first set foot on Panama. But Columbus gave us
+Panama, and never knew! It was Balboa who first saw the waters of the wide
+Pacific from the summits of the Isthmian hills. It was Pizarro who packed
+across the fifty miles of jungle the timbers of the ships which he put
+together on the beach of the Pacific and with which he discovered Peru,
+after indescribable hardships and repeated attempts to find the "hill of
+gold."
+
+[Illustration: THE HOMEWARD WAY AT NIGHTFALL]
+
+On the Pacific side of the Isthmus was founded Old Panama, the first city
+of the New World, where to-day majestic ruins stand, a fitting shrine for
+the reverent pilgrim. And between Old Panama and Porto Bello stretches the
+famous Paved Trail of Las Cruces.
+
+Along this trail lurked the trouble-hunters and makers of the sixteenth
+and seventeenth centuries. For two hundred years the tinkle of the bells
+of the gold-laden pack mules was never silent. On this jungle path, when
+stolen gold was carried by the sackful, trouble was certain to follow. The
+big trail was a pathway of blood, robbery, and intrigue. All the worst
+passions and performances of depraved men turned loose and ran riot for a
+century and a half. These were the days when life was raw and rough at
+Panama.
+
+To-day the old trail is covered with palms and decorated with orchids.
+Occasional stones trace the outline of the ancient highway. Where the
+drunken and ribald song of the muleteer rose about the camp-fire at night,
+canaries and parrakeets now chatter and sing. The soft caress of the
+jungle breeze whispers no tales of the days when the trail could be traced
+by the bleaching bones that lined the right-of-way. The jungle is nature's
+great blotter for the sins, sorrows, and sufferings of an age now
+forgotten--but it all happened in Panama.
+
+Panama is not all jungle. To the westward stretch great savannas, between
+the mountains and the sea; miles and miles of smooth and level country
+open, fair and well watered, only waiting for the tickle of American
+cultivation to laugh a crop. It makes a real estate man's fingers itch;
+but that is another story. Where a little cultivation has been
+inadvertently perpetrated on the land, tall sugar cane, luscious fruits,
+and toothsome vegetables attest the quality of the soil and the climate.
+
+Frequent rivers, numerous inlets on the coast line, occasional interesting
+native towns, old churches, impossible "roads," meandering trails,
+scattered herds of fat cattle, a few sugar mills, numerous trapiches (cane
+grinders), fenced patreros (pastures), and everywhere the mixed-blood
+natives--this is Panama in the western provinces.
+
+Panama westward is not all a flat country, however. Eleven thousand feet
+into the sky rises the Chiriqui volcano, and a little farther west in the
+same range stands Pico Blanco (White Top), at about the same height.
+Thrown across the slopes of these lofty summits and half way up lies a
+great and beautiful country, with a climate such as might have been
+coveted for the site of Eden. Cool, comfortable, and salubrious is this
+garden of the gods. In all the so-called temperate zone no land yet
+discovered offers three hundred and fifty days per year of comfort and
+health. To be sure, vacation pilgrims from the warmer coast country
+sometimes make mention of cold feet upon first reaching this Mecca in the
+mountains, but nobody finds fault on that account. Most of them like it.
+
+Chiriqui is a garden spot. Wide ranges of fertile soil, gentle slopes
+rolling back against the mountain ranges, good harbors along the coast,
+and occasional plantations with American improvements, mark the country as
+the coming granary of the Republic. Rolling slopes and blossoming fields,
+with a background of the never-failing come-and-go of the lights and
+shades on the face of the mountains, form a picture not to be forgotten.
+Always the summits and the clouds seem to be playing leapfrog in the sky,
+and the whole upper world, looking down on the puny traveler, seems ever
+trying to say something and never quite uttering its meaning. And he who
+looks and listens finds himself trying to say it for them, and never can
+he find the word. Perhaps some poetic soul will yet look upon these
+heights and tell us what it is they are muttering.
+
+The coast line of western Panama is a fascinating shore. Like enchanted
+islands rise bits of forest out of the sea and any of them might be the
+castle site of the lord of the main.
+
+In and out between their wooded shores the steamer winds its way till it
+dodges in through some narrow "boca" to find a tortuous channel leading to
+a landing place, that must always be approached at the whim of the tide.
+Whether there be a thousand islands or not, no one knows; but I have stood
+on the steamer deck and counted fifty in sight at a time, while other
+fifties rose up to meet us as those nearby dropped astern. Here and there
+some lonely light blinks its vigil through the night, and the swells of
+the Pacific break in fantastic sea-ghosts against the rocky cliffs.
+
+[Illustration: AN EMPIRE IN THE MAKING]
+
+Navigation of these waters is not a science, it is an art. The captains of
+these coast craft know every tree and rock and river mouth for four
+hundred miles, and make their way through tortuous channels by markings
+that no landsman can see. There is one grizzled navigator, said to be
+unable to read or write, who knows every marking on the coast for six
+hundred miles, and in the long years of service has never made a mistake
+or met with an accident. Possibly his success might be due to the fact
+that what he does not know does not confuse him. His mental horizon may
+not be very distant, but at least he escapes a lot of worry about things
+that he (and you and I) cannot control. When the tides have a rise and
+fall of eighteen feet, and all harbors are but shallow river mouths, the
+negotiation of the coast ports becomes a matter requiring much accuracy of
+judgment.
+
+The old trail across the Isthmus is the Mecca of many pilgrims who by some
+searching find its scattered stones amid the riotous jungle. The later
+trail was opened after the city of Panama was moved to its present site.
+It began at Colon, followed the Chagres River to the present site of
+Gamboa, and then wound its ways over the low summit of the hills down to
+the new Panama and terminated at the "Nun's Beach," where now stand a
+Protestant church and school. Here the pack trains were unloaded and the
+high tides carried the rafts and lighters out to the ships waiting in the
+little harbor.
+
+The dark days of Panama were the days after the gold trade failed. Even
+the gold of Peru was not inexhaustible, and the trade across the Isthmus
+could not stand continued centuries of robbery and murder. It had to end
+some time, and end it did; and when the end came all the Isthmus lapsed
+into a slough of despond and lethargy of inertia. For a century and a half
+Panama was as forgotten as the Catacombs.
+
+But Panama went her way, whether anybody cared or not. The people left on
+the Isthmus were the racial remnants of the mixture of mankind that had
+found its way back and forth for two centuries, and they were fairly able
+to take care of themselves. The rich forests and fertile soil would bear
+fruit and food enough to sustain life whether anyone worked or not, and
+the result was not the development of a virile race of men. How could it
+be? Probably few spots on earth have had less incentive to develop hardy
+and enterprising character than the Isthmus of Panama.
+
+[Illustration: A FEW GOOD ROADS ON THE ZONE]
+
+The prowler about Panama will find a wide variety of interests and
+inspirations. Whatever his peculiar, personal fad he can find it
+somewhere. Then he can prowl to his heart's content.
+
+If he prefers the sea, there are fifteen hundred miles of coast line to
+explore with something new to every mile. Or he can launch out a bit, and
+in a day's time make his way to the famous Pearl Islands, where are life
+and industry so distinct that weeks mays be spent in studying the
+development of a civilization, insular and unique. The coast of Darien has
+boundless possibilities for the explorer; and the San Blas Islands would
+keep the ethnologist busy for months. For an enchanted inland sea the
+Chiriqui Lagoon is unsurpassed.
+
+If historical romance is desired, the prowling is certainly abundant; and
+if the prowler is a lover of nature, wild and luxuriant, rioting in
+marvelous and indescribable forms of overflowing life, he has but to equip
+himself for jungle travel, and he will find wonders by the mile, and
+fantastic nature piled mountains high and chasms deep. If it is mountains,
+they are here in scenic beauty unsurpassed. If the explorer is a student
+of human nature and cares to attempt the unscrambling of this blend of
+blood that flows in swarthy faces, he will be busy here for a lifetime.
+And if none of these will do, and the curious landsman will have nothing
+short of the exploring of vast unchristened wildernesses where no human
+foot has ever trod, and where strange and dangerous forms of unclassified
+life wander at will through the overgrown forests, he will find it--and
+doubtless he will find much more of it than he wants before he gets back
+to civilization.
+
+If it is promotion schemes and development projects, then here at least is
+a commodious place to put them. Here, in agricultural and colonizing
+schemes, somebody will yet get rich--and other somebodies poor.
+
+If the prowler's interest is primarily social, and he would browse about
+one of the most interesting cities in America, let him come to Panama.
+Ancient Spanish streets, scrupulously clean--can these be found anywhere
+else? Side by side, over and under, the sixteenth and twentieth centuries
+run together.
+
+And what makes Panama to-day the crossroad of the world? For him who in
+the love of engineering skill holds communion with high human achievement,
+and prefers to prowl around the locks and docks, and study the marvelous
+successes and adaptations and devices of the latest and greatest feat of
+brain and hand, this is the very center of the earth. No man with a soul
+for the poetry of mechanics can stand in a control house of one of the
+locks and see the enormous gates swing back at the movement of a finger
+without feeling that man, with all his limitations, has yet in his being
+some image of the Creator. To see an ocean giant rise up slowly in the
+teeth of gravitation and slip through the gates on to the higher level, is
+to wonder whether the portals that look so gloomy to us may not, after
+all, be not exits but entrances to a new and higher level of life. What a
+text! The ship does not rise by straining but by resting in a narrow
+place. And no ship ever yet got through the locks without a pilot. The
+whole process is as silent as the forces of eternity. There is a lot more,
+and it bears no copyright. Help yourself.
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH AT NATA, OLDEST INHABITED TOWN IN THE NEW WORLD,
+FOUNDED 1520]
+
+And for the prowler in the region of philosophy, what a place! What
+changes in the geography and commerce and industry and policies and
+politics of mankind must follow this last achievement on the historical
+Isthmus of Panama, "quien sabe?" ("who knows?") None but the Omniscient.
+Trade routes and bank exchanges, commercial dealings and national programs
+will all be affected by this three-hundred-foot wide highway of water. If
+but some power the gift would give us to come back a century hence and see
+what will be doing then!
+
+What social and moral transformations will be wrought in the coming years
+by the release of spiritual forces through the new religious life and free
+faith brought to Panama with the coming of the Canal? Out of the
+soul-bondage of a system of superstition and ignorance will come a new
+human consciousness of the worthiness of life and the high privilege of
+living. Whether it is to prowl or prophesy, the material is abundant, and
+the pilgrim will find rare material a-plenty all about him. Panama is
+perplexing and peculiar, but he who finds the key to the riddle will be
+kept busy.
+
+Perhaps the amateur explorer has a penchant for old churches. Here they
+are. Seven of them, with a couple of first-class ruins thrown in. The rich
+monasteries of Peru and Mexico are missing, but for that there is a
+reason. Every bit of treasure was stolen as fast as accumulated. Yes, if
+unmolested in the past, Panama would be a mine for the antiquarian to-day.
+But any active imagination, even on half-time shift, can find here
+material for romances, warranted to interest every member of the family,
+at reduced prices, if paid for in advance. From the Flat-Arch Church to
+the ruins of Old Panama it is good prowling all the way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TRAIL OF THE PIRATES
+
+
+The present conglomerate of humanity living on the Isthmus of Panama is
+the racial remainder of some very much mixed social history. Here were
+enacted some of the most stirring stories and tempestuous times in
+American history. In 1453 the Eastern Roman Empire fell before the
+assaults of the Turks and closed the land routes to India. Nearly forty
+years later Columbus set sail in his great effort to find a westward
+passage for the commerce of Europe. In this he failed, but on his fourth
+and final voyage discovered the Isthmus of Panama and landed on the shores
+of the Chiriqui Lagoon, supposing that the beautiful inland sea must be
+the long-sought passage westward. Here the town of Almirante still bears
+his name. At Porto Bello and Saint Christopher Bay he made brief stops and
+returned to Spain having no idea of the character of the isthmus that he
+had discovered.
+
+On November 3, 1903, exactly four hundred years from the day that Columbus
+set foot on the soil of Panama, the Republic of Panama declared its
+sovereign independence and began its national life as one of the family of
+American nations.
+
+In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Caribbean main was overrun
+by as unscrupulous and bloodthirsty a set of pirates as ever sailed any
+sea. Even without these rascals there would have been trouble enough, and
+with them the story is sufficiently lurid for the most melodramatic taste.
+
+[Illustration: THE JUNGLE IS THE PLACE FOR PICNICS]
+
+One name stands out above his fellows. The intrepid navigator who first
+saw the waters of the Pacific set forth at the age of twenty-three as an
+adventurer, and after various experiences embarked as a stowaway for his
+second voyage. By personal persuasion he became the partner of his master,
+and after founding a colony in Darien sent Senor Endico back to Spain in
+irons for his pains.
+
+This left Balboa supreme, with the whole Castilla de Oro (Castle of Gold)
+country before him for exploration. He at once sent Pizarro to examine the
+interior and gathered the scattered fugitives from former expeditions. The
+combined forces took the field against the Indians. When they reached the
+domain of Comagre, the most powerful chief of the country, peace was made.
+This chief was a real aristocrat with mummied ancestors clothed in gold
+and pearls, and he gave to Balboa four thousand ounces of gold, sixty
+wives, and offered to show him the way to a country beyond the dim
+mountains where a powerful people lived in magnificence and sailed ships
+of solid gold. He also entertained his distinguished visitor with tales of
+a temple of gold called Dabaibe, forty leagues farther than Darien, and
+said that the mother of the sun, moon, and stars lived there.
+
+Balboa's imagination was stirred by these stories and he prepared an
+expedition of discovery. No temple of gold was found, but internal
+dissensions and Indian attacks disturbed the peace of the colony.
+Reenforcements arrived, and with them the title of captain-general.
+
+Balboa now set out on what was to be the most famous event of his life. He
+had been promised the sight of a great ocean to the south, after he had
+climbed certain mountains. Various Indian oppositions developed, but on
+the 26th of September, 1513, at about ten o'clock in the morning, Balboa
+and his men, from the top of a high mountain, saw for the first time the
+waters of the vast Pacific. The priest of the expedition, named Andreas de
+Vara, chanted a _Te Deum_, with the entire company on their knees. A cross
+was raised, and the names of the Spanish rulers carved on the surrounding
+trees.
+
+After meeting several Indian tribes the descent was made to the shore, and
+Balboa waded knee deep into the surf and, waving the banner of Spain,
+proclaimed that the new-found ocean and all land bordering thereon should
+be the property of his sovereign.
+
+For a long time this new ocean was known as the South Sea, and Balboa at
+once set about exploring the vicinity. The Pearl Islands were located,
+taken possession of, and named. A later expedition by a less difficult
+route crossed the Isthmus of Panama and conquered the Indians on the Pearl
+Islands, bringing back plentiful tribute of fine pearls from the subdued
+chief.
+
+The year following, in 1514, arrived the black villain of the story in the
+person of Pedrarias, sent out from Spain as governor of Darien. This
+disturber brought with him two thousand men. Balboa built a fleet of ships
+on the Atlantic side, took them to pieces, carried them on the backs of
+Indians across the Isthmus, put them together again, launched them in the
+waters of the Pacific, and proceeded to explore the coast eastward from
+Panama. On his return from this trip Balboa was arrested by Pedrarias on a
+trumped-up charge of treason, and in the forty-second year of his life was
+beheaded, while declaring his entire innocency of all treachery. Balboa
+was a product of his age, and of faults he possessed a-plenty, but as one
+of the great explorers of history his end was a sad reward for the
+distinguished services that he rendered to the world.
+
+[Illustration: EVEN FARM CABINS ARE PICTURESQUE IN COSTA RICA]
+
+In 1515 an expedition crossed the Isthmus and camped near the hut of a
+poor fisherman at a point called by the natives Panama. For this name
+several explanations are given, one of them being that there were many
+shellfish at this place. The meaning of the name is now lost, but in 1519
+the city of Panama was founded at this point by Pedrarias. Two years
+later, by order of the Spanish crown, the bishopric, government, and
+colonists of the Isthmus were transferred from the Atlantic side at Darien
+to Old Panama.
+
+History now began in earnest by the Pacific. In 1525 a priest celebrated
+in the cathedral at Old Panama solemn mass with two other men, Pizzarro
+and Almagro, the rite being a solemn vow to conquer all countries lying to
+the south. For this purpose an expedition was soon organized and sailed
+away along the west coast of South America. This expedition met with
+varying fortunes, but in time discovered the long-sought Peru with its
+splendid temples and golden treasures.
+
+The first regular trail across the Isthmus led from Nombre de Dios to Old
+Panama, crossing the Chagres River at Cruces. Later small boats sailed
+from Nombre de Dios to the mouth of the Chagres and made their way up to
+Cruces, where their cargoes were transferred to the backs of horses for
+the rest of the journey to Panama. Later Nombre de Dios was abandoned for
+Porto Bello, because of the very good harbor at the latter place. The old
+trail was "paved" with stones for a part of the way, and the relics of
+this old road may still be found in a few places amid the tangled growths
+of the jungle.
+
+With the conquest of Peru and the discovery of gold in Darien, Old Panama
+came rapidly to its own and soon became a city of great importance, being
+for the time the richest city in New Spain. All the gold of Peru and the
+rich west coast was brought to Panama to be sorted and packed across the
+Isthmus, thence to be sent to Spain. Porto Bello became a rich town and
+maintained great annual fairs up to the time of its destruction by
+Morgan's pirates.
+
+The century and a half between the establishment of Old Panama as the
+chief city of the Isthmus and its destruction in 1671 supplied one of the
+tempestuous periods of history. It was on the Isthmus of Panama that the
+American slave trade began and was continued for three hundred years. The
+native Indians were so destroyed by the brutality and greed of the Spanish
+conquerors that the expedient of importing black men from Africa was
+devised in order to secure a labor supply for the country. Here arises the
+historical precedent for the use of West Indian labor in the digging of
+the American Canal.
+
+The best account of the sacking and destruction of Old Panama is that
+written by John Esquemeling and published seven years after the event, of
+which he was an eyewitness, being a member of the pirates' band. The
+detailed account of this event, with the general pillaging of the Isthmus
+by the English buccaneers, has been narrated with much exactness and great
+interest.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF OLD PANAMA. THE MOST ROMANTIC SPOT IN THE NEW
+WORLD]
+
+Stories of the great wealth of Old Panama in the day of its glory are not
+hard to find. With the complete destruction of all this magnificence, the
+present city was founded with due ceremonies in 1673 and much stone was
+transported from the old city and built into the new. The cathedral was
+soon built and stands to-day as solid as when first erected. The queen of
+Spain sent detailed instructions for the building of the city, and among
+other things directed that a safe wall for defense should be provided.
+This was so well done that some of it still stands, an interesting relic
+of the vigor and thoroughness of the civilization that produced it. Many
+years passed in building these walls, and they were said to have cost ten
+millions of dollars, most of which came from Peru. The story is told of a
+Spanish king, who stood one day looking out of his palace window. When
+asked what he was looking for he replied, "I am looking for those costly
+walls of Panama; they should be visible even from here." A little
+knowledge of the business methods of those days may throw some light on
+the whys and wherefores of the high cost of the old walls.
+
+Twenty-six years after the founding of the present city of Panama an
+effort was made to establish an English colony in Darien, but fever and
+discouragement aided the Spanish in ending the venture.
+
+The eighteenth century is a monotonous one in Panama annals, marked mainly
+by frequent encounters between the Spaniards and the Indians. Several
+piratical expeditions ended in the scattering and murdering of the pirates
+and restoration of Spanish sovereignty.
+
+When the great movement in South America for political independence swept
+as far north as Colombia, and the decisive battle of Boyaca was fought in
+1819, Panama was very strongly held by Spain as a place of maintenance for
+her armies, and the city was at all times in a good state of defense. In
+this same year, however, the first junta was formed for the purpose of
+bringing about independence from Spain, and sentiment in favor of the
+revolution grew very rapidly. Early in 1821 General Murgeon arrived with
+the promise of high reward if he could compose the difficulties in Panama
+and save the Isthmus to Spain. This he saw to be impossible, and after
+having appointed Jose de Fabrega as coloner, he left for Quito. Fabrega,
+being Isthmian born, cast his lot with the revolutionists and on November
+28th, 1821, a large and enthusiastic crowd assembled with representatives
+from all military and ecclesiastical organizations, and Panama was
+declared to be forever free from Spanish dominion. A few loyal troops,
+seeing their helpless position, laid down their arms, and the change of
+government was effected without the shedding of a drop of blood--something
+new in Panamanian affairs. Simon Bolivar sent over help for the
+independents, but found the work done before his men arrived.
+
+After this political upheaval Panama slept on, and would still be dormant
+to-day but for the discovery of gold in California in 1849. With a six
+months' overland journey between the gold-hungry men of the Eastern States
+and the gold-filled mountains of the West, the Isthmus suddenly came into
+prominence as an easier way of reaching California. For seven or eight
+years after the finding of gold not less than forty millions of dollars of
+gold, twelve millions in silver, and twenty-five thousand passengers were
+transported across the Isthmus annually. In 1853 the high-water mark was
+reached, when sixty-six millions of dollars of gold were carried across to
+the Atlantic side and shipped to New York.
+
+This sudden development of the pack train business brought to the Isthmus
+a horde of Chileans, Peruvians, Indians, and mixed breeds, among whom were
+the inevitable plunderers and spoilers. The trail was again marked by
+blood and treachery. Many an unhappy pilgrim lost his riches, and not a
+few lost their lives on the way. At last the authorities were aroused to
+the necessity of making safe this highway suddenly become so important to
+the world.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN WOMAN AT THE FOUNTAIN]
+
+The year of the first gold rush saw the organization of the Panama
+Railroad Company. In 1846 three American business men organized under the
+present name and secured a concession from New Granada for forty-nine
+years with such conditions that no ship canal could be constructed across
+the Isthmus without the consent of the railroad company. When the name of
+New Granada was changed to that of Colombia, the time was extended to
+ninety-nine years. This concession in time came to be very valuable, and
+the French Canal Company found it necessary to buy out the Panama Railroad
+in order to secure control of the exclusive right of way across the
+Isthmus. Later, when the United States acquired the control of the French
+possessions in Panama, the Panama Railroad became one of the most valuable
+assets on the list. By conditions of the concession, this road was bound
+to pay to Colombia the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per
+year. After various transfers and deals this still holds in the form of
+the obligation of the Panama Canal to pay this sum annually to the
+Republic of Panama.
+
+The story of the early construction days of the Panama Railroad are as
+exciting as those of the Morgan Pirates, with a far better outcome. Labor
+troubles were many and bitter, and it became necessary to hold men in jail
+until they were willing to work. The attractions of the California gold
+fields were too much for the cupidity of men who saw daily pack trains
+loaded with gold from the Eldorado of the Northwest passing their wretched
+hovels and taunting them with visions of easy riches. But the work
+proceeded, and after interminable troubles with the black swamp between
+Aspinwall (Colon) and Gatun, the road was finished as far as Gatun in the
+year 1850. In 1855 the line was finished to Panama and the romantic career
+of the most prosperous short railroad in the world was well under way.
+
+Charges for freight and passenger travel were enormous in the early days
+of the road. The fare was fifty cents per mile, with all baggage extra.
+Freight was carried across the Isthmus for twenty-five cents per pound,
+but so terrible were the old pack-train conditions that the travelers of
+that day were more than willing to pay such prices for the luxury of
+crossing the Isthmus by the railroad.
+
+At last the Colombian government took up the matter and the passenger rate
+was reduced. Ten cents per pound continued to be the freight charge for
+years. The road made vast profits, and by a combination of rates with the
+steamship companies maintained a monopoly of travel. A few years after the
+completion of the railroad the pack-train men and outlaws, deprived of
+their plunder by the road, became very active as brigands, and on one
+occasion perpetrated a riot that cost sixteen Americans their lives and
+brought the United States and Colombia to the verge of open rupture.
+
+As far back as 1515 a German named Schoner drew a map of the American
+continents with a clear line for a canal through the Isthmus. In 1581 an
+actual survey was made for a canal, but nothing was done about it. In 1620
+Diego de Mercado submitted a long report to Philip II, but the monarch
+turned it down, saying that since God had joined the continents together,
+it would be impious to try to separate them, and a death penalty was
+decreed for anyone so rash as to try to undo the works of God in this way.
+In 1827 an engineer was sent by Simon Bolivar, president of the New
+Granada federation, and a report was made commending the project of a
+combined rail and water route. In 1838 a French company aroused so much
+enthusiasm in the canal project that an expert was sent by the French
+government to look the ground over. He reported that a sea-level canal
+could be dug without going deeper than thirty-seven feet, but the idea was
+again abandoned. Two American investigations were made in 1866 and 1875,
+and about this time much interest was aroused in the then new Nicaragua
+project.
+
+The popularity of the Suez Canal, successfully completed in 1869, led
+directly to the DeLesseps organization of the Panama Canal Company.
+Agitation began in 1875 and in the year following a right of way was
+secured, but with the Panama Railroad concession standing in the way.
+
+The story of the work of the French Company, the New Canal Company, and
+the final completion of the work by the United States government, is told
+elsewhere.
+
+Now that the trail of the sixteenth-century pirates has become the most
+famous inland waterway of the world, we can read with complacency the
+story of the wretched times during which the Isthmus was the scene of
+constant strife. Verily, Panama was not a very good place for sightseeing
+in those days. The prowlers of the infested jungles and blood-stained
+trails were not such as we would select as traveling companions to-day. If
+any modern prowler becomes despondent and is tempted to complain that the
+former days were better than these, let him read the story of Old Panama,
+and then consider conditions as they are on the Isthmus and the Zone
+to-day, and he will find food for reflection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+PICTURESQUE PANAMA
+
+
+A Panamanian cart loaded with English tea biscuit, drawn by an old
+American army mule, driven by a Hindoo wearing a turban, drove up in front
+of a Chinese shop. The Jamaican clerk, aided by the San Blas errand boy,
+came out to supervise the unloading. The mule wriggled about out of
+position, a Spanish policeman came along and everybody got out and
+"cussed" the mule.
+
+That is Panama, every day. Across the street is an Italian lace shop run
+by a Jew. Next door is a printery, operated by a Costa Rican. Just beyond
+is a French laundry conducted by a man from Switzerland, and on the next
+corner is a beautiful Chinese store where they sell everything from Japan.
+Cloisonne and lacquer and curious carvings, silks, embroideries,
+scientific instruments--they are all here. You can buy Canton linen,
+Hongkong brass, Nikko carvings, Hindoo embroidery, German cutlery, French
+microscopes, Canadian flour, New York apples, and California grapes all
+within a block. And the products of Central and South America are all
+about.
+
+The street in front of the shops is full of Panamanians, Peruvians,
+Ecuadorians, Chileans, Colombians, and San Blas Indians, besides some
+representatives of every country of North and South America, Europe, Asia,
+and Africa. Canal Zone Americans walk past Yankee business men, and native
+police crowd the mestizos off the sidewalk.
+
+Panama is a jitney town, and the honk of the never-silent horn punctuates
+the clang and dash of the trolleys and automobiles down a fifteen-foot
+street in a mad race to see which can get through first. Overhanging roofs
+nearly touch above blooming orchids and talking birds that scream across
+the narrow streets. Gloomy interiors and stumbling stairways lead up to
+spacious apartments and breezy balconies. Above are occasional
+roof-gardens. All the rooms have high ceilings, all the streets are paved,
+and all the kids wear clothes--sometimes.
+
+There is no possible human shade or tint that is absent here. The
+Anglo-Saxons are white, more or less. The Jamaicans are black, mostly. The
+Panamanian is most often a soft and pleasing brown, done in a number of
+wholly unmatchable tints. And the natives from these many sunny countries
+round about are of every known color-tone, from chrome yellow to Paris
+green. This is the human kaleidoscope of the earth: shake it up and you
+will get a different result every time.
+
+You may not like it, but you can never truthfully say that Panama is not
+interesting--all the time.
+
+The streets are clean. Daily sweepers and nightly garbage men take care of
+that. The sidewalks are narrow, of course. Perhaps these two-foot
+sidewalks account in part for the innate courtesy of the Latin mind. One
+must be either polite or profane when he makes his way along these little
+ledges, often two or three feet above the street. A portable stepladder
+would help some.
+
+[Illustration: BATHS--WHOLESALE AND RETAIL]
+
+Some of these houses are old, very old. A few are new; most of them have
+stood here one or two hundred years. There are many three stories high, a
+few boast of four stories, but the most of them have but two. Third
+stories are popular because of the breezes that blow and make life
+comfortable.
+
+Plazas are small, but parked and well kept, and they are used as only
+Latin-Americans know how to use a plaza. The little ones are garden-spot
+oases in the deserts of bare walls and wide eaves. Santa Ana Plaza is the
+heart of the city, and there is no hour of the day or night that there are
+not people there. If you really wish to see the world go by, sit on the
+stone bench at Santa Ana Plaza and look about you. If you stay long
+enough, you may see anybody, from the latest naked brown baby to the last
+chosen president of any country you may name.
+
+Sitting in the plaza is a business by itself in this country. The North
+American uses a park as a short cut, cross-corners, to get somewhere. But
+with the tropic citizen, the plaza is an end in itself. He is not going
+anywhere, he is just sitting in the plaza. He may not even be called a
+bench-warmer--the bench is already warm. He is sitting in the plaza--that
+is all.
+
+The band-night parade in Santa Ana Plaza is an institution. Around the
+central garden they saunter, to the swing of the very good music from the
+central pavilion. The outer walk is wide, and so is the parade. Clockwise
+walks the inner circle, three abreast, all young men. In the opposite
+direction saunter the young women, also in threes. 'Round and 'round they
+go, talking, laughing, listening, looking, lingering, while the band plays
+on. It is a good band too. And not the least of the exhibit is the clothes
+the women wear. In matter of graceful and apparently comfortable costumes
+the Panamanian girls need apologize to none of their northern sisters. Who
+is to blame the boys if they keep on walking around for the sake of seeing
+the seeable, especially when she may be quite worth watching? Every added
+turn means one look more. It is all very dignified and proper, but human
+nature is the same old composition in every land, and the blood in the
+heart runs red, no matter what the tint or tan without. In a land where
+the customs of chaperonage are exceeding strict, and no young woman is
+supposed to be left alone with any young man for the briefest moment, it
+is easy to see why the band nights in the plaza are popular. Ostensibly
+the young women, after the manner of their kind, have no interest in the
+young men, but just the same, their soft brown eyes have the same old way
+of wandering at the right moment; it is the same old trick and it works in
+the same old way.
+
+The cathedral plaza is rather a different matter. Here gather the elite,
+in numbers on concert nights, and more or less on other fair evenings. The
+grown-ups sit about on the benches and the children run and play,
+care-free and comfortable. Well-dressed and content, these are the best of
+the old native stock that used to live "inside" the walls of Panama that
+the Spanish king thought he should be able to see. There are usually a few
+Americans with the crowd, and it is a peaceful and restful family scene.
+Were it not for the incessant clatter of the trolleys and jitneys the
+place would be a good rest-cure. But as matters now stand, there is too
+much pandemonium for any permanent peace.
+
+[Illustration: CONVENT DOOR]
+
+Out at the point of the seawall, near Chiriqui Prison, stands an old stone
+sentry box. It appears to belong to the prison now, but there was a time
+when the outlook from that point on the bay of Panama was the viewpoint of
+Panamanian life as it faced the Pacific and marked the place of departure
+for shores unknown. It is prosaic enough now to stand beside the little
+old stone tower and watch a big liner leave the canal and throw back its
+smoke-plume as it steams out to sea, having left the Atlantic Ocean seven
+hours before. Gone with the days of the explorers and pirates are the
+mystery and menace of it all. The sentry box meant something then. Its
+lone occupant scanned anxiously the horizon for the sail that might mean
+fresh plunders, news from the world beyond, bountiful booty or stolen
+treasure, or perchance a fight to the finish with other pirates as
+unscrupulous as the villains on shore. Now the children gather there at
+sunset to play, care-free on the high wall overlooking the Gulf of Panama.
+
+Old Spanish houses are built with the yard inside. It is delightfully
+intimate and cozy, but not very democratic. Green and clean and cool are
+these little parked "interiors" of the better houses. Some of the common
+patios are dirty and disheveled, and the worst of them are better left
+alone, but the American Health Department looks after the sanitation of
+them all.
+
+Chino (Chinese) shops sell everything, but, aside from the fine stores on
+Central Avenue, are mostly devoted to native trade. Out in the interior
+the Chinese storekeepers transact practically all the business of the
+country. Wherever there are two or three families gathered together, there
+the Chinese storekeeper is sure to appear, ready to harvest any small or
+large coins that may be in circulation.
+
+There were at one time about five hundred saloons of all sorts in Panama,
+This number has been greatly reduced with hope of complete extinction,
+owing to the exigencies of the near-by American soldiers on the Canal
+Zone. The monthly payroll of the Zone is a stream of gold, and it is a
+case of losing that gold or cleaning up Panama. Military orders and
+voluntary boycotts made Panama a lonesome town for the latter part of
+1918.
+
+[Illustration: OFFICIAL LOTTERY IN BISHOP'S HOUSE, PANAMA]
+
+There is the official lottery, suspiciously located. To be sure, the
+bishop does not personally supervise the drawings, and perhaps he does not
+get anything out of it, but no one who knows Panama claims such to be the
+case. When did the hierarchy ever oppose a gambling game that promised
+profit for the cause? Gaunt, hungry-looking cripples and pobres hang about
+the corners selling lottery tickets. Evidently, none of the profits come
+to these unfortunates.
+
+Panama City has its neighborhoods like any other Old-World town. "Inside"
+the old wall includes the original fortified town on the little peninsula
+jutting into the bay. Here live officials, professional and business men.
+Beyond this lies the town that overflowed the wall and now reaches down to
+the park in front of the Tivoli Hotel. This is the barrio of Santa Ana.
+Caledonia and Guachapali and San Miguel lie across the railway and serve
+to fill in the space between the Spanish town and the Exposition grounds.
+A mile and a half beyond the palaces of the exposition lies Bella Vista,
+beautiful for situation and rivaling Southern California for its real
+estate enterprise. Over toward the Canal is Chorilla between the Cemetery
+and Ancon Hill. At the end of the five-cent car fare on the line to the
+savanas is the famous--or infamous--bull ring. Who said that bullfights
+had been abandoned? Not much. Between bullfights and prize fights the
+season is not allowed to drag, and it must be admitted that the number of
+American patrons of these brutalizing contests is not to the credit of the
+kind.
+
+The open market where the fishermen come ashore is one of the show places
+of Panama. Pangas and chingas and craft of every sort, except the modern
+kind, bring in on high tide cargoes of bananas, coconuts, charcoal,
+camotes, rice, sugar, syrup, rum, papayas, mangoes, lonzones, chiotes,
+poultry, pigs, ivory nuts and a score of fruits and vegetables unnamable
+by the uninitiated. When the tide recedes the boats lie high, if not very
+dry, and the unloading proceeds apace. It is an interesting and lively
+scene, and the bicker and barter go on by the hour.
+
+Hard by is the big native market, resort of housekeepers and servants in
+search of commissary bargains. This one is fairly clean and is the morning
+recreation of thousands of shoppers.
+
+Panama has its theaters, of the sort to be expected. One of the movie
+houses compares well with the best anywhere, and most of the others are in
+good condition. The national theater is a credit to the country and forms
+a section of the national palace. On the Canal Zone the clubhouses,
+sometimes called Y. M. C. A.'s, put on several picture shows a week in
+commendable effort to supply recreation to their patrons.
+
+The architecture of the old churches is a bit disappointing to travelers
+who have seen the splendid buildings of other Latin lands. The Cathedral
+has two modern towers, a clock in one of them, and the twelve apostles in
+life size on the facade. The Jesuit Church by the Malecon is very old and
+rather interesting. Recently a new concrete tower has been added, of
+striking appearance, but not closely in conformity with the architecture
+of the church. This church contains a famous old painting of purgatory and
+heaven, and down below, the flames of the lost. It is notable that in the
+place of purgatory are bishops, priests, and kings. There are ten people
+in heaven, and ten in purgatory, and of each ten three are women.
+Query--Where did the painter think that the women belong? It is an
+interesting question, especially for the women.
+
+The big Merced Church on Central Avenue has a curious and interesting
+little street chapel on the corner of the sidewalk, and here are arranged
+curious exhibitions at Christmas and Easter. I saw here the ancient
+village of Bethlehem, with the inn and manger and oxen; but there were
+also a miniature lake with a steamboat, and a grocery wagon delivering
+goods to the ancient Bethlehemites. The stores bore advertisements of
+patent breakfast foods.
+
+No place can be truly romantic until it possesses some good ruins, and
+Panama claims distinction in the old Flat-Arch Church near the palace. The
+interior is now used as a garage, and no one but the tourist seems to
+think the place of any interest. Two blocks away stands the facade of the
+fine old stone church that has been a ruin now for years. The interior is
+now a stable, and the old walls of the college have been used for the
+construction of a modern cheap tenement house. The stone front of the old
+wall stands as a fine example of the architecture and building of 1751,
+when the church was finished.
+
+The San Filipi Neri Church, at the corner of Avenida B and Fourth Streets,
+is made from stone carried in from Old Panama. This church is said to have
+the most beautiful interior in the city, but, as it is very rarely opened
+to the street, the visitor will have to accept the statement without
+opportunity to judge for himself.
+
+[Illustration: RUIN OF FAMOUS FLAT-ARCH CHURCH]
+
+The savanas lie northeast of Panama and beyond the ruins of Old Panama.
+The rolling slopes of green and the growing number of villas will make
+this strip of country valuable and famous before long.
+
+Of Panama's hotels not much need to be said, except that they are good of
+their kind. Latin hotel standards are different from those of North
+America, but good judges of hotel life have pronounced those of Panama to
+be quite endurable.
+
+There are always two or three daily papers in Panama and an indefinite
+number of weeklies. An immemorial custom exists by which when any citizen
+has anything on his mind that he feels he should unload to the profit or
+otherwise of the public, a printed pronunciamento is issued and circulated
+about the streets by boys, handed out freely to everybody in sight. This
+really effective method is sometimes used for important matters of state.
+
+[Illustration: EIGHTH-GRADE ROOM, PANAMA]
+
+The educational system is modeled upon the best Latin-American standards,
+with primary schools of four grades throughout the Republic. Provincial
+centers have schools with two, and in a few cases four years more. The
+National Institute, at the foot of Ancon Hill, maintains a normal school
+for men and a liceo which grants the degree of Bachelor of Arts upon the
+completion of about the equivalent of the American college freshman year.
+The young women are given a normal course in the Women's Normal School at
+the Exposition grounds. There is no coeducation above the primary grades.
+The Agricultural Experimental Farm and School, abandoned as an experiment
+station, is used as a reform school.
+
+Taboga Island lies off shore and furnishes a point of much interest. It is
+the week-end Mecca of the Zone people and also of many of the Panamanians.
+There are a good American hotel, several fair native hotels, good fishing,
+tramping, an interesting native village, a healthful climate, and a fine
+view--and all within ten miles of Panama.
+
+If the prowler is looking for real adventure, he can seek for it on Gocos
+Island, three hundred miles south of Panama. Here are said to lie hidden
+somewhere ten millions of dollars' worth of treasure, stolen from Callao
+and other points between 1820 and 1830. Harvey Montmorency wrote it up in
+a book entitled On the Track of the Treasure, and so well did he tell the
+story that four large expeditions have been organized and sent to find it.
+One man is said to have found a little gold for his pains, but the others
+went home poorer than they came. And if these are too easy destinations,
+there lie the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Peru, said to contain
+many possibilities, of many kinds. Peru is supposed to have the islands on
+the market, and anybody with the money can purchase one, all his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A CITY OF GHOSTS
+
+
+No one has ever satisfactorily explained the existence of ghosts in an
+enlightened world, but I have a theory that they survive because they
+render a real service. They lend interest to life and at least keep us
+from forgetting the super (or sub) natural.
+
+Likewise ruins have high value as a link with the past, and with neither
+ruins nor ghosts life would become a very flat affair. And if ever a spot,
+by history, tradition, situation, and present condition, was marked for
+rendezvous purposes by all the tribe that gibber and squeak and wander at
+night in the dark of the moon, that place is Old Panama.
+
+The history of Old Panama has been told, and well told, by other writers.
+Read it there, and read it before you see the place. Many pilgrims go out
+there, poke about among the ruins for a quarter of an hour, and exclaim,
+"Is this all?" Without the story the most appreciative pilgrim will miss
+the flavor of the place, but without a little romantic appreciation both
+the story and the ruins will fall short of revealing all that the place
+has to give.
+
+The old town site was a hopeless jungle until the National Institute,
+under the leadership of Dr. Dexter, cleared away the brush and laid bare
+the traces of streets and buildings. To-day the place is in good condition
+and one may wander about at will and dream to his heart's content. It is
+no place for joy rides, and the roadhouse is a blot on the place, but
+there are people still who see nothing but a refreshment counter and
+worthless stone heaps.
+
+[Illustration: CONVENT GARDEN]
+
+One of the favorite amusements of tourists and other people used to be
+that of digging for treasure at Old Panama. No one ever found anything of
+value, but it made a fine story to tell upon return to the States. "When I
+was digging for treasure in Old Panama"--just say it and see what a flavor
+it has. It is most probable that if the ruins were located in a cooler
+climate, there would have been a great deal more digging. Under a tropic
+sun, however, it takes considerable bait to induce anyone to indulge in
+such vigorous exercise.
+
+The treasure idea is easy to locate. Peruvian gold was all brought up to
+Panama and stored in warehouses until it could be packed across to Porto
+Bello. There were endless fighting and plots and schemes and robberies and
+murders connected with the gold trade. Many a man lost his gold, and many
+a man his life. And, in consequence, some of the gold was also lost in the
+melee. What more natural, then, than to look about for this lost treasure
+in the place where most of it was stored?
+
+Now, there may be millions of dollars' worth of old gold somewhere about
+Old Panama. The only difficulty is that no one ever yet has been able to
+find any of it. The probability is that no gold was ever left there long
+enough to be very much lost, and the men who did the fighting also took
+care of the gold. But that does not prevent any one from "digging for
+treasure in Old Panama" if he wants to do so.
+
+Nevertheless, there is treasure in Old Panama, and it is to be had for the
+digging. But the digging will be, not amid the rocks, but into the history
+of the place. And the digger will find rare nuggets for his pains. Balboa,
+Pizarro, Pedrarias laid out this town, and set the pace for the wild and
+unprincipled years that followed. And Henry Morgan, adventurer, pirate,
+and general rascal, ended the story as it was begun--in crime and blood.
+
+[Illustration: ROMANTIC OLD CONVENTS SURVIVE]
+
+Accounts of the construction and character of the old city represent it to
+have been builded with much magnificence. All the woods used in building
+were of the fine native mahoganies, and there were hangings, tapestries,
+and paintings in the sumptuous houses of the men who became enormously
+rich from the traffic of the times. Returning ships from Europe brought
+luxuries as well as necessities, and the gold trade people maintained
+regular fleets of ships and put Panama in close touch with the life of the
+age. There are described two large churches, a cathedral, a "hospital,"
+over two thousand large houses, and several very large establishments for
+the care of the great number of pack animals used on the trail. Large
+quantities of gold, silver, pearls, and gems of various sorts were in
+evidence. In the day of its glory Panama was a veritable Arabian Nights
+city, with some two hundred warehouses for the storing of stolen treasure.
+
+The story of the destruction of the old city is one of shocking cruelty
+and lust, and merely furnishes the last chapter of the same tale of crime
+that marks the history of the Isthmus from the finding of the Peruvian
+gold to the days when the murderous pillages of rival pirates finally
+destroyed the commerce of the Isthmus and left Panama little more than a
+memory of former glories. The burning of Old Panama marks the turning
+point in Isthmian history and closes forever the days of conquest. About
+this time the vast supply of Peruvian gold became exhausted, and between
+the failure of loot and the destruction of trade by brigandage the Isthmus
+fell into neglect and was nearly lost sight of by the world for two
+hundred years.
+
+Anyone who knows the story of the place will find the ruins fascinating
+because they show a construction of the days when men built strong walls
+because nothing else would stand the strain of the lives they lived. Some
+of the walls stand as firm and strong to-day as they did three and a half
+centuries ago, and unless removed by the hand of man they will stand here
+a thousand years hence. And when a wall stands for centuries in this
+tropic climate of disintegration it is a wall to remember.
+
+[Illustration: RUINED TOWER AT OLD PANAMA]
+
+Most conspicuous stands the old church tower, splendid and defiant amid
+the wreckage about its feet. Straight and strong it lifts its lofty head
+above the treetops, and, viewed from any angle, is a majestic figure.
+There is no construction in modern Panama to-day that may be compared to
+the grand dignity of that sentinel tower. Like some old prophet, amid the
+ruins of a wayward people, the tower raises its head and stands in mute
+but noble witness to the reality of the things that endure. For the tower
+was honestly built, and therefore stands. Against its solid walls, builded
+from their rock foundation straight upward, the ravages of time have made
+but little impress.
+
+The tower was part of the cathedral, and the cathedral was one of three or
+four great churches. Of at least two others well-preserved ruins still
+remain, and are well worth careful study. The reddish-brown coloring of
+the old walls and the vine-covered stone help furnish endless temptations
+for the artist, but no one has yet given adequate expression to the
+splendid possibilities of these ruins.
+
+Still more interesting vistas open to the mind's eye of the student with a
+constructive imagination. There were churches many and large and beautiful
+in Old Panama. And there were pirates wild and wicked and hated in Old
+Panama. Who "ran the town"? The pirates or the priests? What relations
+existed between the two? And if there were churches of such great beauty
+and strength, why were there also the terrible pirates? What were the
+churches doing that they did not bring about a better city?
+
+These are hard questions, but to anyone who knows conditions to-day, and
+who knows that conditions to-day are better than they were in Old Panama,
+the answer is not far to seek. The hungry and helpless peons did not give
+the money to build those costly churches, though they doubtless did the
+hard work of construction. And if the pirates were good givers--and they
+doubtless were, under promise and threat--then they also influenced the
+general scheme of things in Old Panama. In short, the churches of Old
+Panama did not make a very good town of it.
+
+What a story Jack London could have written here! It is too bad that he
+did not find Old Panama before it was too late. Not only the ruins, but
+the vista of royal palms along the beach, with the little
+red-white-and-blue crabs scurrying about at high tide, unite to raise a
+sense of romance that starts the wheels of fancy revolving in one's brain.
+All one needs is a "long, low, rakish black craft in the offing,"--there
+it is now, the very thing, a big chinga, fifty feet long with four sails
+and twenty-five men on board, luffing and tacking about into the little
+bay just around the point. Pirates or fishermen--don't inquire too
+closely; either will do, and both are useful in romance.
+
+[Illustration: COSTA RICA TRAPICHE, OR SUGAR MILL]
+
+In one of the churches are some old graves, where some natives have been
+buried, partly for convenience and perhaps partly from sentiment. Fine old
+walls stand earthquake-cracked, but still strong. Of roofs there are, of
+course, none. And back of the church are still intact the foundations of a
+house said to have been the house of the governor, and the vaulted arches
+of the old cellar storehouse are still intact. A native lives in a shanty
+near by, and he greets the visitor, not with the information that might
+make him useful and get him a tip, but with the vacant optimism of those
+who feel that somehow something is coming to them whether they earn it or
+not.
+
+As for the natives, none of them know anything about the place. The few
+that live there are of the sort that would camp under the nose of the
+sphinx and never look up into his face. But the reader of this can well
+spend a half day amid the most fruitful prowling anywhere in Panama. He
+may gaze at the splendid tower till the broken walls about it rise again,
+and the old tiled roof once more covers the worshiping congregations
+within, and the drone of mass and the fragrance of incense again ascend
+before the high altar. And down the old street, with its one-story houses,
+once more wind the pack trains and muleteers and men and women and
+children. There is excitement everywhere, and commotion and cursing, and
+everybody runs down to the beach. And if you will turn about and gaze out
+to sea, you will see there a curious craft with freakish sails, and when
+it drops anchor and the boat pulls ashore, you will see old Almagro
+himself step out on the sands sword in hand, and with rough and profane
+commands, take charge of the unloading of his golden cargo. There will be
+wild times in Old Panama to-night, for the pack trains have returned from
+Porto Bello with a cargo of rum, and the sailors from Peru have been long
+at sea, detained by unfavorable winds, and, like sailors of other times
+and climes, they are thirsty. Out from the church door comes the tonsured
+priest; he shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders, and makes his way down
+to where the great Almagro stands, a commanding figure amid the confusion.
+For the commander has the gold, and, like all explorers of his time, he
+will be in need of a proper blessing by the priest; and the padre, being
+human, can use a little of the gold.
+
+But while you gaze and dream, "dear reader," the vision fades and "the
+tumult and the shouting dies," and there stand the ruins, and there swings
+the sweep of the tropic sea, and you are again in the twentieth century, a
+little richer in mental imagery for your short excursion back into the
+sixteenth.
+
+Which is to say that dreaming is easy at Old Panama. Try it yourself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE SPELL OF THE JUNGLE
+
+
+What the desert is to Arizona and the ice to Alaska the jungle is to
+tropical America. He who has never traveled through a tropical jungle on a
+trusty mule has missed something out of his life. He should go back and
+begin over again.
+
+The jungle is much maligned and often misinterpreted. The jungle has a
+place in the agricultural life of the tropics, but it has also a place in
+the aesthetic and moral life of mankind. Here at last there is room, and
+the starved and stunted life may relax its struggle and strain and expand
+under the luxuriance and exuberance of a world where all the forces of
+life overflow and run riot in a thousand fantastic forms of energy and
+growth. Like the uncharted vastness of the polar sea and the unbounded,
+shimmering mirage of the wide desert, here at last there is plenty and to
+spare. When a man has stinted and economized all his life on a New England
+hillside amid stones and stumps, the jungle takes the load off his soul
+and sets him free in a universe of new and untested dimensions.
+
+The jungle is misunderstood. There are jungles unworthy of the name, but
+these vast Panamanian hothouses are a different matter. They are not the
+bottomless morasses of deadly snakes and poisonous vapors. Since men have
+learned how to live in the tropics these terrors have largely retreated to
+the highly colored accounts of tropical travelers who took one look and
+fled--to write a book of timely warning to the uninitiated. These jungles
+are not the haunts of hidden horrors and poisoned arrows. Ferocious
+tree-dwellers may inhabit the unknown recesses of the upper Amazon, but
+they do not live in the jungles of Central America and Panama.
+
+[Illustration: PAPAYA TREES]
+
+It takes just three conditions to make a good jungle, and these three are
+all present in this fascinating country. Moisture, temperature, and soil;
+mix them in the right proportions and you can produce a jungle at the
+North Pole, but nowhere can the mixture be located except in the tropics.
+When one remembers the painstaking toil expended on the rocky fields of
+northern New York and then turns to a land where the problem is not to
+encourage but to prevent growth, one wonders how it happened that our
+ancestors blundered into an environment reeking with difficulties when
+they might have had all this overflow of abundance for the taking.
+
+There are several brands of jungle, to be sure, and distinct differences
+of kind may be located easily. The jungle of the overflowed level river
+land is a very different formation from that which climbs over the rolling
+hills and up the mountain slopes. But everywhere there is the same
+reckless riot of power and life. Fantastic growths are here just because
+there is so much growing to do and so much energy back of the roots that
+there are not conventional forms of life enough to go around and life
+boils over in every conceivable absurdity of form and habit. This is no
+place for a niggard. But it is a splendid antidote for smallness of soul
+and for that dried-up-ness that settles down like a pall upon the spirits
+of men who never in their lives have had enough of anything or breathed an
+atmosphere of abundance.
+
+It must be a petrified soul that can resist this wanton abandon of
+vegetable life. How a man can spend three days in this full-blown
+exhibition of vital energy at work in the vegetable world and ever be
+small again is more than can be readily understood.
+
+Here is a world where no one ever need cry for more; there is too much
+already. After a few days of it one longs to get out in the open, to see a
+barren spot somewhere just to rest the surfeited soul a bit. It's all for
+the asking; in fact, there is no chance to ask; it is poured out of the
+horn of nature's plenty, and all the color and charm and fantasy and music
+and laughter and glory of it are piled in wild profusion a hundred feet
+high, and you cannot get away if you will. Nature at least has a chance to
+show what she can really do, and it is yours for the looking.
+
+[Illustration: BANANAS AND SUGAR CANE]
+
+What makes up a jungle? Well, that's hard to say. There are mighty trees
+of cedar and mahogany and a hundred lesser breeds, lifting their heads
+into the tropic sky. There are palms and giant ferns of course. There are
+wonderful purple and magenta and crimson-topped trees, whose glaring flat
+colors fairly shriek at you like the bedlam of a paint box let loose on
+the sky. Sturdy lignum vitae trees stand conscious of their high value and
+rare qualities. Ferns in profusion, vast, variegated and immense, line the
+banks of streams and hide in the shadows of the great trees. Orchids, of
+course, winding streams strewn with the flowers and foliage of the dense
+mass overhead, entrancing water streets and winding Venetian tunnels
+through forests so thick that the sun never penetrates the shadowed
+fastnesses below. There are paraqueets, parrots, singing canaries,
+alligators, bananas, bamboos, singing winds, warbling bluebirds,
+blackbirds that can render a tune, purples and blues and crimsons and
+browns, all poured out and mixed together without stint. It is fascinating
+for a few hours, but after a time you get overloaded and are ready to cry
+"Enough." It's great, but a little stupefying till one gets used to it.
+
+The jungle of the mountains is essentially different from and more
+interesting than that of the level swamps. Both are largely uninhabited,
+for men naturally like to have a little outlook both for their lives and
+about their habitations.
+
+But the growth is about equally dense, provided the soil and moisture are
+right for the production of real jungle. From Puerto Limon to Almirante is
+about one hundred and twenty miles overland, and there was a time when
+practically every mile of this distance was untouched jungle. The United
+Fruit Company has conquered most of it, until there is now but a day's
+journey on horseback through the connecting link between the two railroad
+terminal points at Estrella and the Talamanca Valley. The one hundred
+miles of rails run almost entirely through the endless fields of bananas.
+But once this was all primitive wilderness; that is, we think it was, but
+some of the superintendents of this clearing and planting work say that
+they have discovered numerous evidences that there was a time in ages past
+when practically all of this vast area was under some sort of cultivation.
+
+[Illustration: CACAO PODS]
+
+There would be a railroad now across the gap of twenty miles but for the
+fact that this gap includes a mountain range with rushing rivers and
+steeps, gorges and almost impenetrable forests. Occasional travelers cross
+this range by the aid of sturdy mules, but there is yet nothing that could
+by any strain of language be called a trail. There is simply a "blaze"
+through the forest and occasional marks where some floundering traveler
+has preceded the venturesome explorer through the depths of some yawning
+mudhole.
+
+I crossed this range on a day when the sun was shining overhead, but only
+two or three times did its rays fall upon the "trail." The overhead growth
+was so thick that there was nothing but dense shadow below. A hundred and
+fifty feet these immense trees rose into the air, carrying upward with
+them festoons of hanging vines, swinging rattan, and clinging orchids.
+Curious enough are some of these trees, with their winding external
+buttresses and thin flanges thrown out to brace against the winds. Banyan
+trees reach out their long arms and drop their fingers down into the soil
+and take root and continue until the tree literally "stalks" its way
+across the mountain side. There are rubber trees and cedar trees and
+mahogany trees and prickly poisoned trees that are the terror of the
+natives, and trees bearing all manner of jungle fruits and flowers and
+swarming with chattering birds and creeping things. Rattan "ropes" an inch
+in diameter and two hundred feet long trip the unwary traveler, and it is
+useless to try to break them. They are like steel cables. Wild birds are
+plentiful, occasional baboons bark and bray, and the mountain streams
+splash and plunge their way through the ferns and flowers. The Estrella
+River forms the highway for several miles, and its rocky torrent must be
+forded a score of times.
+
+He who has never tried to travel this "road" has a new experience in
+store. There are hillsides that are all but perpendicular, which would not
+be so bad, but they are a mixture of clay and soapstone and moisture, and
+it is practically impossible to stand erect without holding on to nearby
+saplings. How a laden mule can navigate such a causeway of destruction is
+a mystery to be explained only by people who understand mules. And I rode
+a mule whose mastery of the art of trail-navigation left nothing to be
+learned. In the ignorance of my novitiate I alighted before the first
+precipitous descent to which we came. The mule, with the conservatism born
+of experience, took his time to make the descent, and I essayed to go
+before and show him how to do it. He watched me with intense interest,
+while I gingerly approached the edge of the slippery declivity and started
+down. As a descent it was a complete success. At the second step I slipped
+on the wet clay and went rolling and coasting to the bottom, whither I
+arrived in record time, plastered from head to foot with the raw material
+of which pottery is made. I struggled to my feet and looked up at the
+mule. He still regarded me intently, and I think that he winked, at least
+his ear did. Then he deliberately put his front feet over the edge,
+gathered in his hind feet, and with all fours together, sat down and
+gracefully slid to the bottom of the hill. He arrived right side up at the
+bottom, munching a mouthful of grass, which he seized in passing on the
+way down, and turned to look at me with an expression that needed no
+interpreter. And I took the hint and stayed on his back most of the day.
+
+After a solid day of this dense growth where we could not see more than a
+stone's throw at any time it was with a distinct sense of relief that we
+caught sight of daylight at last through an opening ahead and came upon
+the fringes of the Talamanca plantation.
+
+[Illustration: PROPOSED LOCATION FOR REST CURE]
+
+The Talamanca Valley is something quite worth while in itself. Years ago
+it was inhabited by Spanish refugees who fled back from the bloody attacks
+of the ravenous Caribbean pirates of the sixteenth century. Their little
+plantations were not large and the land was not cleared very thoroughly,
+but they shifted their planting places until much of the present area was
+covered sooner or later with platanas. The view of this valley from the
+hillside is surpassingly beautiful. Thirty miles long, ten miles wide, and
+surrounded by mountains and forests, the whole floor of the valley is one
+vast, waving, level field of bananas, and there are few things better to
+look upon than a valley level full of banana tops. From twenty to forty
+feet high they stand, and their long, shady corridors are like the aisles
+of some great series of cathedral chapels, waiting for worshipers within.
+Through the middle of the valley runs the stream of the upper Sexola River
+with its three tributaries and their bluffs. The Changuanola Railway,
+which is the name under which the United Fruit Company moved its bananas
+and its men in this great plantation, runs the length of the valley, and
+the line of rails is punctuated by the white cabins of the black employees
+and the houses and offices of the plantation superintendents and foremen.
+
+Dominating the whole valley stands old Pico Blanco, or White Top. There is
+no snow at the summit, but there is nearly always a white cloud cap there,
+hence the name. This noble mountain is the interest and admiration of all
+dwellers in the valley. Its top lists eleven thousand feet above the sea.
+It is not as high as Pike's Peak nor Shasta, but it towers well up toward
+the level of Fujiyama, and beside it Mount Washington looks like a pigmy
+and the Adirondacks are mere foothills. Back in the canyons and forests of
+the mountain range live the curious Talamanca Indians, whose tribal
+customs indicate a close affinity between their ancestors and those of the
+famous Indians of Quirigua.
+
+The difference between the jungle and the dividend-paying plantation is
+one of organization, capital, administration, and toil. Add these to the
+jungle and you have the plantation. Take them away from the plantation and
+in a very short time the jungle is again supreme. Crowding around the
+corners, peeping over the edges, and creeping ever onward, the jungle
+pushes its jealous way behind the footprints of the men who essay to
+conquer its wild ways. But once defeated, the jungle becomes a slave
+bearing costly burdens for its master--man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LIFE AT THE BOTTOM
+
+
+"Forty years ago I took a bath, and the next day I felt chilly, and
+then--"
+
+"Never mind forty years ago. What is the matter this morning, and why have
+you come to me for medicine?" chants the seasoned employer of plantation
+labor.
+
+"That is what I was telling you, senor. Forty years ago I took a bath, and
+the next day I felt chilly, and then I thought that I had made a mistake,
+and so I went--"
+
+"Now, see here. I have no interest nor curiosity about forty years ago.
+What is the matter with you now?"
+
+"Be patient, senor. This is important, and I will tell you all. Forty
+years ago--" and after devious dodgings the tale terminates in a case of
+fever or indigestion, or mayhap only plain drunk.
+
+It is ever thus with the tropic tao, or peon, or ignorante, or whatever
+may be called the people who have grown up with the soil and have risen
+not any above it. The petty official who hears complaints in any tropic
+land listens to marvelous reminiscences through deep jungles of
+imaginative memory before reaching present facts.
+
+"Twenty-five years ago I had the toothache, and then the next week I had a
+bad dream, and after that I had no suerte [luck] at all, until one saint's
+day I drank rum and ate rice, and the rice make me sick--" is merely the
+opening chapter.
+
+Every employer of tropic labor must be judge and jury for a docket of
+petty cases that have to be adjusted if the wheels of industry are not to
+be paralyzed in their work. Newcomers at this business of sitting in the
+seat of judgment hear marvelous stories of oppression and outrage, in
+which the accuser is always innocent--and always alone, if possible. But
+experience breeds disillusionment and skepticism deep and wide, and soon
+the amateur Solomon learns to distrust every story, most of all the first
+one told. For, after the plaintiff has sworn that he is telling the truth,
+or may all the saints strike him dead, and has unrolled his woes in
+orderly sequence, he stands with critical eye, watching to see what
+impression his art has made upon the puzzled personage of power.
+
+And when the adjuster of affairs scorns the tale and says, "Get out with
+you. I don't believe a word of that stuff," the beggar bows and smiles a
+deprecating smile and begins all over again with a revised version of the
+case, which bears very little resemblance to the first story, and again
+stands back to observe what better success he may hope for this time. And
+there appears to be no end to the ready versions and variations of the
+woes of the downtrodden exponent of virtue whose humble bearing seems to
+exude virtue from every protruding bare spot through his rags. "Last
+Wednesday morning, I got up, and--would you believe it?--there was nothing
+in the house. There was no yucca [counting off on his fingers],
+no plantanas, no huevos, no carne, no mais, no azucar, no
+arroz--absolutamente nada. Yes, it was last Wednesday--no, no, senor, I am
+a liar--it was last Tuesday morning. And, senor, my children were hungry,
+and I remembered that there was nothing--" and so on the story goes to its
+climax in the claim that a certain party, not present, owes the complainer
+fifty cents for real or imaginary value bestowed, and will the owner
+please collect the fifty cents for the starving children?
+
+[Illustration: PICTURESQUE JUNGLE TOWNS]
+
+And if this tale is unsatisfactory, comes immediately a fresh version to
+the effect that it is another man who owes a dollar because he tramped
+across some young corn and spoiled the crop.
+
+It is this fertility of imagination that makes up for any sort of accurate
+information. To the American the amazing thing about these people is that
+they know so little about their own very interesting country. The American
+must know in order to boom his town, but the tropic native has no idea of
+booming his town. There is no fun in booming, there is nothing to boom,
+and a boomed town would be always stirring about or starting something,
+and would be a nuisance anyway.
+
+I stood in a village, quaint and curious, and wondered how old it might
+be. The bells hanging to a cross beam in front of the old church bore
+figures on their rims--1722, they said; and they looked it, every inch--or
+year.
+
+Came the young curate of the parish, a good-looking and intelligent
+native, who talked a little with us pleasantly, and lured us into the old
+church, where he immediately improved the occasion by getting the
+collection basket and holding it under our noses. "It is a special saint's
+day," he explained.
+
+"How many people live here?"
+
+He could not tell.
+
+"How old is the church?" we wanted to know, thinking to get a morsel of
+information for our crumb of contribution.
+
+He did not know. The question was entirely new to him. He had been born in
+the town, and later showed us with pride the house in which himself, his
+mother, and his grandmother had been born, but as to the number of
+inhabitants or the age of the church it had never occurred to him to
+inquire.
+
+But presently inspiration came to his aid. There was an ancient woman
+still living at more than a hundred years; surely she would know the
+answer to some of these curious questions.
+
+[Illustration: TORTILLAS ARE STAPLE]
+
+We called on the old woman. She was nothing but bones and parchment,
+sitting with her chin on her knees on a small platform of slats which she
+had not left for over two years. She claimed one hundred and two years,
+which was undoubtedly correct, as baptismal records are usually accurately
+kept. She certainly looked the part. The studiante sat down on the "bed,"
+placed his hand kindly on the old woman's shoulder, and told her that
+though she was blind there were three strangers who had come to see her
+and congratulate her on her great age. She was pleased and said so, but
+her mind was as feeble as her body, and there was little that she could
+say. When asked as to the date of the "blessing" of the church, she said,
+"O yes, certainly I can name it--it was on Saint John's day."
+
+"That's fine," enthused the curate. "Now, what year was it, grandma?"
+
+"Ah, that is another matter. I can't tell you now, but if you will come
+to-morrow, I may be able to remember it then."
+
+[Illustration: JUNGLE FOLK]
+
+We left the next morning, of course, without the date of the dedication
+day, but what information was lacking on this point was amply made up in
+information concerning the population. We asked seven people the question
+and received seven different answers, ranging from three hundred to five
+thousand. We counted a hundred odd houses, indicating six or seven hundred
+people, but no one there had any idea or any interest in the matter. What
+difference did it make anyway?
+
+The town of Nata, eighty miles west of Panama, was founded in 1520, one
+year after the founding of Old Panama, and one hundred years before the
+Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Old Panama has been a ruin for two and
+one half centuries, leaving Nata as the oldest inhabited town in the New
+World--no small distinction.
+
+[Illustration: "THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT"]
+
+I asked the leading official if he knew how old the town was, and he said
+that he understood that it was "very old." When I suggested that it was
+the oldest town in America he nodded politely and talked of something
+else. I called on the priest, an intelligent and friendly man, who also
+understood that the town "was very old," but its priority of claim to the
+oldest living municipal inhabitant of the Americas had little interest for
+him. He talked on, complaining bitterly of the bad morals of the people
+and the small financial proceeds which the parish yielded its spiritual
+leader.
+
+It is easy to disparage any people, especially if they speak a different
+language from your own. Most of the things said against the illiterate
+natives of any country are true, but the trouble is that they are only a
+small fraction of the truth.
+
+A large employer of native labor, who took pride in treating his men well
+and paying them promptly, complained to me that he never could keep steady
+labor on his place for the reason that the men earned enough in one week
+to keep them drunk for the next fortnight, and hence worked only one week
+out of three, leaving their families to starve or shift for themselves as
+best they might. And he told the truth.
+
+But he did not tell it all. This same employer distilled the rum on his
+own place and regarded it as a paying business. When other employers
+raised the price for labor and produce he refused to do so on the ground
+that the more they had the worse off they were. On the surface it might
+seem to be true.
+
+But these same laborers, even saving all possible margin of wages, could
+not have lived in anything like comfort on sixty-five cents per day. Most
+of them never see a newspaper, and could scarcely read, and not at all
+understand it if they did see it. There is not an item of news, a trace of
+historical knowledge or perspective, a gleam of scientific understanding,
+a moving picture show, or a lecture on any subject, or a musical program,
+nor any one of the thousand things that add interest and widen the horizon
+of life--none of these things ever enter the remotest areas of his
+consciousness. He lives in the flat, narrow confines of a life so small,
+so cramped, so possessed by superstition and terror and ill will that he
+is not many removes from the cattle with which he works. When this man
+would celebrate his saint's day he gets drunk, organizes a bull fight, and
+gives vent to every low impulse of his nature.
+
+Is it any wonder? The only tingle of interest that touches his soul comes
+from adventures in the realm of unfaithfulness and drunkenness. How many
+of the rest of us would do any better if born and bred in the mire of his
+social inheritance?
+
+There is such a thing as moral hookworm. Saint Paul called it by another
+term, but its symptoms are unchanged. The unshod soul, shuffling through
+the mire of degradation, acquires from the lower stratum of his
+environment the infection of a spiritual destitution that lowers moral
+vitality to the minimum.
+
+How comes this benumbed conscience and depraved practice! What is the
+matter that the average of legitimacy for all Central America is thirty
+per cent of the total population, while the seventy per cent are born of
+unmarried parents?
+
+It is not for lack of churches. Every town has its church, and the church
+is invariably the best building in the town. It stands on the plaza,
+commanding, central, and usually more or less beautiful. One can scarcely
+get out of sight of a church tower in any thickly settled, level country.
+And the churches are large enough to contain almost the whole population
+of the town, at least by taking them in several installments at mass
+hours.
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH BELLS OF ARRAIJAN, CAST 1722]
+
+It is not for want of priests. There are priests in every town, and most
+of them carry out pretty faithfully the routine of ecclesiastical
+observances that make up the day's program. Black gowns, tonsured heads,
+and beads and rosaries are seen everywhere, and the padre is usually the
+most influential man in the town.
+
+It is not for want of religion. Every house of any pretensions has its
+holy pictures, often its crucifix, and usually its rosary. Women in
+numbers attend mass and go to confession.
+
+It is not for want of opportunity on the part of priests or church. It is
+not because of "church competition." Here we have a unity complete and
+final.
+
+For three hundred and ninety-eight years the priests and their church have
+had sole, exclusive, and continuous occupation of Nata, the oldest town in
+America. I was probably the first Protestant missionary who ever walked
+the streets of the place. Here in the oldest town, with the longest
+occupation and the undisturbed opportunity, should be found a fair chance
+with these people.
+
+And what has it done? The open-minded and friendly priest complained
+bitterly of the fact that in his parish only five per cent of his people
+were born of married parents. Ninety-five per cent were registered on his
+books as "Naturales." The year before he had administered over three
+hundred baptisms and had celebrated only three marriages. "I can't get
+them to marry," he groaned. "Practically speaking, almost no one is
+married."
+
+Is Nata worse than other towns? Possibly so, but it must be remembered
+that the "church" has had a longer chance there than in any other city in
+all America, and perhaps when the other towns have been exposed for the
+same length of time to the system, they will show equally advanced
+results!
+
+There is this thing to be said about the characteristic attitude of the
+average priest toward his people: he always despises them. In many lands I
+have found this to be true. Discouraged by the failure of his system to
+produce spiritual life, or even good morals, he complains bitterly that
+the people are indifferent, careless, negligent, immoral, unfaithful, and,
+not least of vices, they are poor pay. If they are these things, no one
+knows it better than the man who hears their secret confessions. And that
+this man should come to a chronic attitude of distrust toward the products
+of his own spiritual husbandry is one of the severest indictments against
+the system that produces indifference on the part of the people and
+cynicism in the heart of the priest.
+
+What was the church doing to remedy this situation with its deadly
+monotony, its superstition, ignorance, and immorality?
+
+The church was maintaining its round of formulas, saints' days, masses,
+confessions, baptisms, funerals for-what-the-traffic-would-bear. Showy
+processions and occasional celebrations were the circus and movie for the
+people. And on the confession of the troubled priest himself, there was no
+moral result. Out of the dead past stood a mummied memory of the once
+living church, and its mumbled incantations had no power to make the dry
+bones live.
+
+The only power that seems able to stir new life in the old mausoleum is
+the advent of a vigorous Protestant work. In rage and bitterness the
+powers bestir themselves and begin to defame and persecute their
+disturbers, and in the end, they inevitably give some attention to
+reviving their own decaying program.
+
+How can a man be well when he is one hundred dollars away from a doctor?
+With four doctors located among two hundred thousand people scattered over
+a radius of forty by a hundred miles, and all fees exorbitantly high, what
+is a poor man to do when illness overtakes his household? What is he to
+do? Why, nothing at all, except await the end, either of his illness or of
+both infirmity and himself. What the missionary needs is no less Bibles
+than castor oil and quinine and iodine. I think that I would begin with a
+moving-picture program and a clinic, and when a little physical health
+appeared, and some sort of interest began to loosen the rusty hinges
+before what occupies the mental space, I would begin to talk of something
+to make life worth living. It was the way of the Master to heal and teach
+and arouse, and the whole program of missionary work might be founded on
+"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more
+abundantly." That is the key to the process. These people are not bad;
+they are crippled. They are not vicious; they are lifeless. They are not
+rebels: they are very much untaught, backward children.
+
+[Illustration: FIRST-GRADE ROOM, PANAMA]
+
+The system of public schools is growing apace, but it has a tremendous
+task, small support from the parents, and often open opposition from the
+priests. In one town a citizen remarked that on examination day at the
+close of the term not a single pupil came to school, but that it made no
+difference, as they were all promoted and would live just as long whether
+they were promoted or not. (How I would have enjoyed that, as a boy!) In
+another town the supervisor had criticized unfavorably the people for
+certain careless habits, whereupon the teachers took offense, all resigned
+and closed the schools. The secretary of education siding with the
+supervisor, all schools remained closed, and the children were happy.
+
+There is one safety valve left for people in such lives, and that is the
+world-old prerogative of talk. In the long evenings, by the roadsides, on
+the street corners, over the balconies flows an endless stream of talk.
+Prattle and chatter and gossip and slander flow on and make up the only
+scenarios the people know. Most of it is harmless. Some of it is aimless,
+and all of it is fruitless of anything except to save the mind from utter
+blankness.
+
+They were chattering away in the evening, three or four women seeming
+unconscious of me, a traveler stopping for the night. One subject held
+undivided attention for much time--What shall we cook for breakfast? And
+from that it was but a step to that eternal solace of feminine
+conversation--the shortcomings of men in general and husbands in
+particular. One of the animated declaimers arose, struck a dramatic
+attitude, and said, "To expect that any man should be of any use about the
+house is impossible," and the eloquent shrug of her shoulders underscored
+the remark. In vain I broke in and protested that in the United States it
+often happened that the men were successfully commandeered and detailed to
+the work of kitchen police, but the only reply was an arched eyebrow and
+another shrug. "Tell that to the marines," was what she meant.
+
+There are two measures of quantity. Either it is "No hay sufficiente"
+("There are not enough") or "Hay bastante, bastante" ("Plenty, plenty").
+The population of the next town is one or the other of these measures. The
+distance to the river, the crops, the number of children in the family,
+the tale of the years that is told--it is all one thing or the other. And
+the standard, in contrast with the artificial measures of a high
+civilization, is at least true to life. Either there is enough or there is
+not enough--that is about as close a distinction as the day's experience
+affords. For that matter, all the rest of us are on one side or the other
+of the same cleaving line of necessity.
+
+That everybody should blame everybody else for whatever may happen to be
+the matter is the most natural thing in the world. Whom shall we blame if
+not some one else?
+
+It is the fault of the officials that the country is poor. It is the fault
+of the large landowner that there is no development. It is the fault of
+the municipalities that the towns are not better kept, it is because of
+the officials that justice is not better administered. It is the fault of
+the Canal Zone that the good days are gone forever, and it is the fault of
+the American government that there are certain restrictions on native
+tendencies to move forward by the backward jerks of revolution. A Costa
+Rican once said to me, "This war in Europe amounts to nothing; but if we
+could get up a good old-fashioned revolution, I would be on the job
+to-morrow."
+
+The virtues of these people are a surprising list, considering their scant
+opportunities. They are kindly in dealing with foreigners who show
+themselves friendly. They do not as a rule abuse their children, which the
+West Indian is apt to do if he is of the baser sort. The native is
+hospitable and courteous and always willing to oblige, provided he knows
+what to say or do. To be sure, the inventory of his information is
+disappointing, even concerning such subjects as the distance to the next
+town and the market value of rice, but he will tell all he knows and share
+what rice he has. Traveling through the country alone, I have been shown
+every kindness and entertained with the best that was to be had, and often
+sent on my way without being allowed to pay for what I had received. "Do
+you think I would take money from a guest?" protested a hospitable host
+with whom I had spent the night and who had fed my horses, the guide, and
+myself, and had entertained us all evening with discussion of many
+matters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE INTERIOR
+
+
+We had reached the town of Anton the day before, and I had sent the guide
+back with the horses and purposed to make my way alone. The morning was
+fresh and balmy, as befitted the dry season, even if a night spent on an
+antiquated cot in a room next to that occupied by a man with a racking
+cough and a rooster with a clarion voice, were not a perfect repose. The
+_rapport_ between the fowl and the afflicted was complete: when one of
+them broke the silence, the other immediately took up the refrain. At
+breakfast I suggested to the good wife of the host that I had heard that
+if a board were placed above a rooster's head so that he could not stretch
+upward, he would not crow. She was all solicitude at once at the
+suggestion that the noisy cock had disturbed my slumbers, and I had to
+protest my indifference to such serenades.
+
+Down the street I found a little store where the owner had a horse or two
+to hire upon occasion. Thirty minutes of bicker and I was astride a wiry
+little native pony to which a bridle was unknown, and out through the
+stately palms and luxurious bananas I made my way to the open country
+eastward. The river was thronged with horses led to water, and women busy
+with their domestic laundry. It was quaint and picturesque. In some such
+manner might the ancient Egyptians have gone about their morning tasks. I
+have seen exactly the same procedure in the Philippines and by the rivers
+of southern China.
+
+A mile or two from the town the trail mounted a rolling hillock and I
+pinched myself to remember that I was not in New Mexico. Straight ahead
+rolled the almost level llanos for miles until they were lost in the hills
+by Chame, and the purples and pinks of the six-thousand-feet summits were
+like a frame for a picture whose southern limits were in the glint of the
+blue summer sea. It was a picture and a promise. For two hours the nervous
+little pony followed the trail across the smooth plains and frequent
+streams. If ever a land was spread out as a challenge to the plow and
+seeder, here it was.
+
+I sought a colonization site, where I had heard of a dozen plucky
+Americans who were undertaking a plantation on cooperative lines. At last
+I found it in the midst of as fine a tract of land as lies beneath the
+tropic skies. An old-fashioned farm dinner made life worth living after
+native "chow" for days. Modern tractors, plows, a ton of cotton seed, and
+other signs of enterprise did much to make the place seem like somewhere
+in the great Southwest. But the enterprising Americans were harboring no
+delusions regarding the nature of their undertaking. They meant business
+and had counted the cost.
+
+[Illustration: THE BEAUTIFUL SAVANAS OF COSTA RICA]
+
+An American on the Canal Zone invested his savings in land in the
+interior, and during the vacation built a good wire fence. On his second
+visit the fence was totally destroyed by ax, fire, and wire-cutters. The
+owner appealed to the local alcalde, a brother of the provincial governor.
+He demanded redress for his wrongs. The judge heard his story, and then,
+striking a dramatic attitude, smote his breast, and exclaimed, "If these
+my friends had not done this thing, I should have done it myself." Which
+was to say, no foreigners need apply in those parts. It is probable that
+this outrage could not occur under present conditions.
+
+"The Panama politician thinks that all the republic begins in Las Bovedas
+and ends in Las Semanas," remarked a plantation owner of the interior
+country.
+
+Whether this is true or not, few people realize or know anything of the
+splendid country that lies back of the Canal Zone and out of reach of the
+flitting traveler. To the average Canal Zone employee all Panama begins at
+dock seven and ends in the Administration Building. And for the tourist
+who comes to do the Canal in a day, of course, everything begins with the
+Washington Hotel and ends with the Tivoli.
+
+But Panama is something vastly more significant than a couple of
+slow-service, high-priced hotels. The Isthmian Republic is an empire in
+possibilities, entirely apart from the Canal Zone, though the development
+of the latent riches of the country is most vitally related to the Canal
+enterprise. And the rich belt of land that binds together two continents
+is something very much larger than the interesting little city that bears
+the name of Panama.
+
+Back of the ten-mile strip controlled by the United States stretches a
+land abounding in natural resources which make it potentially a factor of
+agricultural and economic importance. To the uninformed citizen of the
+United States and other countries the Republic of Panama is a mere
+shoestring tying together the two continents, lest the pair become
+separated and one of them lost. We look at the Isthmus in contrast with
+the two vast continents that lie to the northwest and southeast, and the
+connecting link appears small. Panama suffers from comparison with its big
+neighbors.
+
+Compared with well-known and important insular holdings in the Caribbean
+group, Panama assumes entirely different proportions. Panama is two thirds
+as large as Cuba and has one third of Cuba's population. Panama is about
+the size of Portugal, is four times as large as Salvador, seven and one
+half times as large as Jamaica, and nine times the size of Porto Rico.
+Panama is as large as all New England except Maine, and nearly equals the
+combined area of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia.
+
+There are interior areas of well-watered, rich soil that equal whole
+States in size and yet are entirely unknown to many residents of the Canal
+Zone. The Chiriqui Province has a coast line of one hundred and
+thirty-three miles and contains as much land as Delaware, Rhode Island,
+and Long Island combined. The rich agricultural region in the provinces of
+Cocle, Veraguas, Los Santos, and Herrera is as large as the State of
+Connecticut. The region east of Panama City reaching out to Chepo is as
+large as Rhode Island, and in the Darien country is an area almost
+unknown, but abounding in rich resources which would cover the map of New
+Jersey with a good margin.
+
+It is supposed that no one lives in this large territory except the
+Americans on the Canal Zone and inhabitants of the two cities of Panama
+and Colon. This is also indicative of ignorance. The Republic of Panama
+has two thirds as many people as Paraguay or Jamaica, and, as previously
+stated, one third as many as Cuba, as many as Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho
+combined, or is about equal to Utah, Nevada, and Arizona put together.
+
+On the basis of resources and soil and climate and accessibility to
+market, Panama can support a population many times her present numbers.
+Her capacity for supporting population from her own products is larger
+than that of most of the States of the Union, acre for acre. Panama's
+resources are as good as those of Jamaica or Porto Rico or Cuba. On the
+basis of Jamaican population there should be six and one half million
+people in Panama, and if the number of people per square mile were equal
+to that of precipitous Porto Rico, we would have a population in Panama of
+ten and one half million, which is more than live west of a north and
+south line drawn through Denver, Colorado.
+
+That no such population lives to-day in Panama is due to political causes
+more than any other factor. The population of Porto Rico has nearly
+doubled since American occupation exchanged the old regime for the new.
+The barren deserts of the great Southwest are becoming fertile and
+populous regions because the people who are possessing the land have a
+fair chance, and know that they will be assured a market for their produce
+and security for their lives and property. Given political security,
+monetary stability, market accessibility, and assurance of economic
+cooperation on the part of the government, there are no immediate limits
+to the population that Panama may support in comfort.
+
+[Illustration: SHIPPING COSTA RICA VEGETABLES TO PANAMA]
+
+Political stability for the government of Panama is assured by the
+relations which exist between the United States and the Isthmian Republic,
+a condition which exists in no other Spanish-American republic. The
+proximity of the Canal assures a world market. The climate and soil and
+water supply nature has provided with lavish hand. Sanitation and hygiene
+have become exact sciences, and the matter of retaining good health in the
+tropics is no longer a problem. There is still good land to be had on
+favorable terms, but the supply will soon be controlled by monopolists who
+are seizing the present opportunity to load up their future bank accounts,
+while war conditions produce a general depression of the world's
+development forces.
+
+The present interior population includes three distinct classes of people.
+The original Indian stock still exists, pure and often wild, in the high
+mountains and remote regions of the country. These Indians are beginning
+to emerge from their fastnesses and get acquainted with their neighbors,
+now that they are sure of police protection when they come out. But their
+number is small and they are a negligible factor in the totals.
+
+The West Indians are an importation, and while they are easily adapted to
+the climate and form the staple of labor supply for the Canal, they are
+not the Panamanians and never will be except as they mix with the native
+stock and shade off the colors that exist in such confusion. The Negroes
+and Panamanians are much more distinct in the interior than about the Zone
+with its terminal cities, where the remnants of humanity have been stirred
+together for four hundred years. West Indian populations exist in
+predominance only on the plantations of the United Fruit Company, where
+they supply the labor for the operation of these vast enterprises.
+
+The Panamanian is the predominant man in the interior country. He is not
+black, nor is he entirely white, but he has straight hair and features
+that indicate that he is a descendant of the original Indian stock, mixed
+with the Spanish conquerors who overran the country in the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries.
+
+Probably the Panamanian has had less opportunity for advancement than the
+people of any other country in America. He has had no chance for national
+life or political self-expression. He has been the victim of the most
+vigorous and long-continued era of piracy and plunder that the New World
+has experienced. He has suffered from bad leadership when he has had any
+leadership at all. He has been exploited by everybody who came to the
+Isthmus. From the days of Morgan down to the formation of the present
+Republic, under American protection and guarantee of peace within and
+without, this native has been the outcast of the world and the national
+goat of the American flock of nations. He has been kept in ignorance and
+superstition by the exclusive control of a system of religious oppression
+and subjection, and if by chance he happened to acquire anything worth
+getting, somebody was always ready to take it away from him.
+
+This native supplies the labor for such enterprises as have been launched
+in the fertile western regions of Panama. With anything like good
+treatment he gives a return for his wages, and if he has a chance to
+acquire sound health, an intelligent outlook on life, and a share in the
+results of his labors, he can be made over into a good citizen. He is not
+a bad citizen now, but he is very much undeveloped.
+
+The products of this great interior region are many and their proceeds in
+the world's markets are profitable. Present prices make large
+opportunities for investment, and a reorganization of marketing facilities
+will mark the beginning of an era of prosperity for Panama. The list of
+products now being raised in and exported from Panama is a surprisingly
+long one, and the total of returns from these commodities would give a
+western real estate promoter material for many prospectuses and promises.
+
+The chief products of the country at present are bananas, lumber, rice,
+sugar, cacao, meat, citrus fruits, corn, coffee, and coconuts. But there
+are a hundred other products, many of which indicate large returns if
+produced and marketed on a commercial scale. Rubber, ivory, nuts, hides,
+beans, pineapples, potatoes, yams, yucca, cotton, tobacco, plantain, a
+long list of fruits and vegetables of high value, and a number of minerals
+are but a few of the useful commodities now being supplied to the markets
+of the Canal Zone and the world from the interior country of Panama.
+Nearly every vegetable that grows in the temperate climate does well in
+Panama. Some of the native fruits, such as papayas, mangoes, and alligator
+pears, are of delicious flavor and high value. The waters of Panama abound
+in vast quantities of fish, and there is supply for a number of fish
+canneries. Live stock thrives and is produced in considerable numbers in
+the provinces of Cocle and Chiriqui. The Canal Zone is now being used as a
+farming enterprise and stock grazing range by the administration of the
+Zone with the intention of making the Zone area self-supporting in meat
+and fruit and vegetables.
+
+[Illustration: GOOD PINEAPPLES GROW HERE]
+
+With an average import trade of ten millions and an export of more than
+half that amount, Panama is even to-day a factor in the world's markets.
+It must be said that the largest item on the import list is that of goods
+shipped to the Zone, and that the chief export is bananas shipped from
+Almirante, but these items indicate large possibilities in further
+developments of territories as yet untouched.
+
+The interior of Panama includes three general types of country, very
+different in climate and produce. The high mountains are a large area of
+country, much of which is fertile soil clear to the peaks, and all of
+which on the northern slopes is covered with jungle and forest. These
+wooded slopes are wet with abundant rainfall, and luxuriant foliage of
+tropical forms bewilders the traveler with illusions of fantastic
+creations of nature run mad over the earth. These mountainous parts are
+for the most part uninhabited, except by the more or less wild Indians,
+who live apart much as they were living four hundred years ago. No white
+men have tried to maintain themselves in these regions, and in some
+districts it is said that a white man's life is unsafe overnight. Tropical
+beasts and reptiles and birds abound among the weird forms of vegetation
+that seem to be perpetrating grotesque jokes on the bewildered visitor to
+the regions beyond the realm of civilized habitations. There are as yet no
+efforts made to establish towns or plantations in this country. Yet if
+cleared and cultivated, these regions are capable of supporting a
+population as dense as that of Porto Rico, where the steep hills and rocky
+peaks are covered with a population of over three hundred per square mile.
+
+The jungle lands of Panama are elsewhere described, and where there is a
+jungle there are always rich land and abundant water, sometimes too much
+water and need of drainage. The Canal Zone is mainly jungle land, and
+where it has been cleared for cultivation excellent results are attained.
+The cost of clearing this jungle is not so great as would appear from the
+fact that for bananas and many other forms of crop the trees and brush are
+cut down and after a time burned, and no further effort is made to clear
+the land except about four cleanings per year with a machette. Anything
+like plowing is un-thought of for bananas and some other leading crops.
+Even sugar is often planted and left to shift for itself, under native
+methods, which are subject, of course, to improvement.
+
+[Illustration: DEAD TIMBER IN GATUN LAKE NOW COVERED WITH ORCHIDS]
+
+The third class of land in Panama is the level or rolling prairie land
+known as savanas or llanos. These lands lie for the most part in the
+valleys back of Bocas del Toro and along the southern, or Pacific, coast
+of the country. From Chame to Cape Mala a belt of level country sweeps
+around the Parita Bay. From ten to forty miles back of the coast rise the
+high mountains, and this fertile strip of country averages about thirty
+miles in width and is over a hundred miles long. Rolling country extends
+on west of this plain, but the plain itself contains enough good farming
+land to feed several millions of people. It is watered and drained by
+frequent rivers which cut across from the mountains to the sea every three
+or four miles and furnish every facility for cultivation. Most of this
+level country is first-grade soil and is adapted to the growing of almost
+any of the products of this tropical land. The general appearance of this
+open country suggests New Mexico or Southern California much more than any
+land below the tropic of Cancer. Its numerous towns and occasional good
+roads suggest a newly opened territory in the west, where there are
+abundant opportunities for growing up with the country. The newcomer is
+apt to be deceived into thinking that all things are now ready and all he
+has to do is to move in.
+
+In the extreme western part of Panama lies the great Chiriqui Province
+with its best-developed region in the entire Republic. Here are great
+cattle ranches, sugar fields, rice plantings, cotton farms, cornfields,
+and here are American companies working to develop modern civilized
+conditions. Here is the Chiriqui Railroad between Pedrogal and Boquette,
+with a branch running westward. More interest has centered in this region
+than in any other part of Panama, and if the proposed railroad from Panama
+to David is ever built, the whole southern slope of western Panama will
+suddenly appear on the map of the world's granaries.
+
+Road-building presents no unusual difficulties in this region such as
+confronted the Americans in the Philippines when they built the Benguet
+road up from Dagupan. Rainfall is high, but the country is comparatively
+level and well drained, and in many of these western provinces a graded
+dirt road has kept in good condition for ten years without repairs. During
+the dry season it is now possible to travel by coche over much of this
+country.
+
+The climate of this interior country is dryer and cooler than that of
+Panama, which lies in the jungle area. In the dry season, which is also
+the windy season, and lasts in western Panama from mid-December to late in
+April, health conditions are excellent, and with proper precautions they
+are good all the year around. Needless to remark, the natives take no
+precautions whatever.
+
+Good drinking water can be secured by sinking properly located wells, and
+this water shows freedom from minerals of a deleterious nature. There are
+seaports for coast vessels at almost every river mouth, and roads lead
+back from these to the interior towns.
+
+There is a fascination about travel through these interiors. But the trip
+must be made during the dry season. We left a large town one morning,
+paused on a hilltop to take a picture, which included a troop of cavalry
+out on a practice march. It was late, and the three of us departed at good
+speed, soon outdistancing the soldiers. Two days later a chance traveler
+informed us that the military men were anxious to interview travelers who
+had broken the rules with a camera and then vanished from sight. We passed
+the encampment on our way back, hung about town two hours, and proceeded.
+That night a solitary mounted soldier paused by our camp and remarked,
+"I'll bet you are the fellows they are hunting." We suggested that we were
+waiting to be found. Two weeks later, a secret service man called and
+inquired as to our business on that trip. Which is to say that Panama's
+interior is a roomy place in which a man might easily lose himself or find
+an empire. A good government, an infusion of energy, and a supply of
+capital will make a rich land of nature's great virgin farm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ECONOMIC WASTE
+
+
+If it is true that South America is the victim of a bad start, it may also
+be said that Panama is the net result of a continuous and consistent
+follow-up campaign of wholesale demoralization through a long period of
+years.
+
+Beginnings are apt to be determinative, and when reenforced by continuous
+applications of similar influences, are sure to set a stamp on a long
+period of civilization. Three centuries of rule or misrule make a
+considerable impression on any people. There is something more than
+climate to be taken into account in the search for causes of the present
+conditions in Panama.
+
+The entire colonial program of Spain differed radically from that of the
+English in Canada or the United States in Hawaii or the Philippines. The
+leading motive of the conquistadores was the love of gold. Plunder,
+rapine, and devastation followed in the trail of the adventurers who
+fought their way across Panama and conquered Peru. Missionary zeal there
+was, but so mixed were the motives of these early heralds of the cross
+that the occasional man of pure and peaceful methods was often supplanted
+by the monk who used all means that he might make "Christians" of men who
+had no alternative but to be baptized or destroyed outright. "Better be
+dead than be damned," thought the energetic priests. Never was a dastardly
+deed wrought by the conqueror but there was a priest at hand with heaven's
+blessing on the crime. If this is doubted, read the unchallenged
+Prescott's Conquest of Peru.
+
+Spanish colonial policies had small regard for the rights or development
+of the conquered. It was one of the viceroys of Mexico who said, "Let the
+people of these dominions learn, once for all, that they were born to be
+silent and obey, and not to discuss nor have opinions in political
+affairs."
+
+The native village of the far interior country, away from the main roads
+and untouched by uplifting influences, exhibits the situation at its
+worst; but even so, these same villages exhibit a better condition than do
+the wretched Indian huts of the high Andes farther south. The population
+of these distant barrios on the Isthmus can hardly be classified on
+distinct lines; every symptom is accounted for and every unfavorable trait
+explained by historical factors and social forces that have combined to
+make remote Panama what it is to-day. There can be no radical change in
+these conditions until some new program of social uplift, educational
+progress, and spiritual life is introduced to cause a fresh reaction and
+begin a new life.
+
+The ignorant native hears an intolerable burden of superstition. His
+contact with the form of church life that exists in these towns is mainly
+expressed in the celebration of occasional fiestas and the payment of fees
+for services rendered, and supposed in some way to benefit the contributor
+or his dead relatives. If "the test of a religion is its results upon a
+people," then the impartial observer must draw his own conclusions.
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR MEAT MARKET]
+
+That these interior towns are intensely conservative is to be expected.
+How could it be otherwise than that the methods of the fathers should be
+good enough for the sons? If human progress is not the result of dominant
+inner forces resident in human nature, but comes from the application of
+external stimuli, then the Panamanian may have some excuse for his
+situation, in a social history that has afforded little incentive for
+exercise of enterprise or industry.
+
+[Illustration: THE FLAVOR OF OLD SPAIN]
+
+If the far interior of Panama is to be judged by present industrial
+efficiency, the case is lost before the trial begins. General absence of
+everything that marks a high grade of living emphasizes the failure of the
+status quo. Incompetence, bad management, childishness cry aloud from
+rotting buildings, rusting machinery, neglected plantings, impassable
+"roads," and impossible officials. Streets knee-deep in mire, mud-floored
+houses, through which pigs wander at will, shiftlessness, dirt,
+insanitation are the register of the wet season in interior Panama. The
+outstanding church building is often itself dirty and disheveled.
+Sidewalks exist only as balconies for individual houses, and vary in
+height at the caprice of the builder, making the middle of the street the
+only convenient highway for the passers-by.
+
+The bulk of this out-of-the way business is handled by the ever-present
+Chino with his little tienda. If there is no Chinese store in the town, it
+is because the town is too poor to support one. Business involves effort
+and industry, both distasteful to the native, but breath-of-life to the
+Chinese.
+
+Inspection of some native towns creates the impression that everybody just
+sits around all day. Along the streets the people lounge the idle hours
+away. Hundreds of young men lie about, rocking in chairs, lying in
+hammocks, hanging about corners. Women slowly move about their household
+duties, but the men are experts at the rest cure, and scarcely move at
+all. Once a young man gets a pair of shoes and a necktie, his industrial
+career abruptly terminates, and thenceforth he toils not, neither does he
+spin. He has arrived and is content.
+
+[Illustration: TAKING THE REST CURE]
+
+Lack of energy brings inevitable localization of all interest and action.
+Most of the people have never been any distance from home and have no
+desire to travel. Travel means exertion of some kind. I asked a guide to
+go one day further than the first-day trip for which I had hired him, and
+he returned an embarrassed and deprecating smile, as if I had asked him to
+go to the French front. It was too far from home.
+
+It is impossible to get information worth anything about the country. "How
+many people live in this town?" brings one of two answers. Either it is,
+"I do not know," or it is "Bastante" ("Plenty"). "How far is it to Los
+Santos?" brings something like, "Senor, when the sun is there [pointing]
+you set out on your journey, and when it is over there, you will arrive."
+
+We crossed a well-traveled road.
+
+"Where does this road lead?"
+
+"To the port, senor."
+
+"And where does the other end of it go?"
+
+"To San Pedro, senor."
+
+"How far is it to the port?"
+
+"The same distance as to San Pedro."
+
+"And how far is that?"
+
+"Bastante lejo, senor" ("Plenty far, sir").
+
+Cultivation of crops is unknown. When the brush and trees are cleared the
+stumps are left about two feet high; it is easier to do the chopping at
+that point than lower down. After the fallen growth has sufficiently dried
+out it is burned off and the stumpy field usually planted to corn. This
+corn is allowed to shift for itself until ripe, and after the stalks have
+rotted awhile the land may have an application of grass seed and be used
+for pasture, in hope that the stock will wear down the stumps until it
+becomes at last possible to perform an athletic feat, called for want of a
+more accurate term, "plowing." I saw four oxen all pulling in different
+directions, while a plow occasionally disturbed the weedy surface of the
+ground and turned up irregular lumps of hard soil. The proprietor looked
+on with pride and asked if I had ever plowed. I had. Did I plow like that?
+I did not. When this plowing has been acted out, and some sort of
+clod-breaking has taken place, sugar cane is planted, and the work of
+cultivation is ended. For a dozen years the cane will produce annual crops
+of more or less value without any attention whatever other than the
+cutting of the cane when ready for the mill.
+
+[Illustration: THE OXEN STAGE OF AGRICULTURE]
+
+An interior road is an experience. A road is a route of travel along which
+various persons make their way as best they are able, under such
+conditions of weather and impassability as happen to exist. In the dry
+season some of these tracks wear down to a condition in which a cart can
+be coaxed over the right-of-way. In wet weather nearly all the native
+thoroughfares are wholly impassable except for sturdy oxen, which plow
+their way through the mud and sinkholes with deliberation born of long
+practice.
+
+The man at the bottom of the scale is not to blame for his situation. He
+is the victim of a system that has made it exceedingly unwise for him to
+do anything other than what he does.
+
+Poverty is the only protection of the people. For nearly two centuries
+pillage, plunder, piracy, and murder were the record of the Isthmus. Every
+buccaneer who sailed the Spanish main seems to have made a business of
+taking a chance at the Isthmus. It was open season for every kind of crook
+work that the minds of men could invent. Most of this activity was
+confined to the trade route in the middle of the Isthmus, but the
+influence and terror of this bloody age extended both ways as far as the
+country was inhabited. The common people were exploited, plundered,
+murdered, enslaved, and beaten at every turn.
+
+Only a fool would work when to work meant that his head was marked for
+immediate oppression. If he forgot himself and got hold of anything of
+value, some one was ready to take it away from him without delay; and if
+he objected, he lost both his property and his head.
+
+The social dregs that strayed to Panama or stayed in Panama in those lurid
+days were men without character, conscience, or capacity for industry,
+other than in their favorite occupation of despoiling some one else.
+
+These pirates and plunderers are gone, but they have left their tracks and
+traces in the civilization of the Isthmus. The common people to-day are
+mild and submissive; no other type could survive. It is possible to exist
+in dire poverty and pass the time without land or property, and that is
+the only kind of existence that holds any promise of peace to the man at
+the bottom.
+
+[Illustration: WAYSIDE SELLERS OF FRUIT]
+
+There have been efforts on the part of the leaders of Isthmian life to
+inaugurate a new era and bring about improvements. These efforts have been
+spasmodic and usually complicated by political considerations. Large
+appropriations have been made for roads, public buildings, machinery,
+schools, and mills, but while the money has been expended, it has gone
+like water in a sandy desert, and graft and inefficiency have swallowed up
+the funds with little or no results.
+
+It has been supposed that appropriations for bridges, public markets, or
+good roads would in some way take the place of industry and thrift and
+bring good times. Half-finished markets rear their ghastly skeletons in
+town centers. Rusting road-rollers stand idle, decaying machines lie
+neglected, and half-finished public works are covered with cobwebs. Nobody
+notices, no one cares, and nothing is done.
+
+[Illustration: THE HOUSE BESIDE THE ROAD]
+
+A railroad was built with the evident idea that it would bring prosperity
+to a section of naturally rich country, but a railroad without crops is
+useless, and crops without labor are impossible, and labor without
+adequate returns is worth still less than it costs. The economic structure
+rests on the man at the bottom, and when this human foundation is the prey
+and target of every one above him the result can be nothing other than
+general distress and inefficiency.
+
+In some sections of the interior, as in the provinces of Cocle and Chitre,
+meat cattle of good quality are raised. Shipping facilities to the Panama
+market are very good. There is no regular inspection, but the cattle are
+uniformly healthy and in good condition. The cattle-raising end of the
+trade is all right, but the market is a different matter. The cattle
+buyers in Panama are organized into what is known as the meat trust, and
+these buyers hold the sellers in subjection. Prices are kept down to the
+lowest possible basis, and monopolistic methods so well known in North
+America are in full swing.
+
+Individual holders of interior ranchos have made earnest efforts to
+produce foodstuffs and introduce definite reforms into the methods of
+farming, but such persons have usually served as fearful examples to their
+neighbors. In an industrial system in which the one method of the man at
+the top is to keep his eyes open and whenever he finds anyone who has by
+chance or industry accumulated something, take it away from him--this does
+not stimulate long hours and speeding-up on the part of the men who do the
+work.
+
+When the United States took over the Canal Zone and paid the purchase
+price to the new Republic of Panama, a good appropriation was made to the
+interior provinces for the building of a system of highways as the first
+step in a general improvement of the country. Most of the provinces have
+little to show for this expenditure of money. In one province reports were
+received that the money was being handed out in petty grafting operations
+and for political purposes and that no road was being built to speak of.
+An American engineer was sent to investigate. He reported the facts and
+was later put in charge of the "work." He reorganized the entire
+construction force, and at the expense of less than twenty thousand
+dollars built a road which has stood without repairs for a dozen years,
+and is in good condition to-day under heavy usage. But the reorganization
+pulled down on the engineer's head the wrath of the entire officialism of
+the province, and finally the men higher up in authority denounced the
+American for upsetting the smooth-working system at their expense. He had
+committed the unpardonable error of using the money to get results and
+build the road for which it was appropriated.
+
+This is interior Panama at its worst. There are Americans who have
+invested their money and their personal supervision in the development
+enterprises in Chiriqui, and they are hopeful of better things. There are
+officials who are genuinely anxious to see a better age begin. And the day
+will come when this fair land will make men rich by the abundance of its
+products and the certainty of large returns upon development work done
+under favorable conditions. But the conditions do not yet exist in any
+stable form.
+
+All of this is Panama at its worst, and forms but the background of
+contrast for the picture of the fine possibilities that lie in the soil,
+and in the unreleased resources of a human stock that has never had a fair
+chance. Once separated from hookworm and superstition, given an industrial
+education, and assured competent leadership and certain returns for toil,
+and the lot of the Panamanian is no more incurable than that of any other
+victims of a bad system.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+PANAMA AND PROGRESS
+
+
+The coat of arms of the Republic of Panama bears the inscription, "The
+repudiation of war and homage to the arts which flourish in peace and
+labor." Under the existing treaty with the United States the first part of
+this excellent motto is guaranteed. Panama is a providential Republic and
+presents some of the finest possibilities of the American tropics. The
+educated Panamanians have not been slow to proclaim these rich resources,
+but no large advance has been realized yet. The government of Panama has
+been friendly to promotion plans and development projects, and has
+undertaken some ambitious enterprises on its own initiative, but the
+results have been on the whole disappointing.
+
+American business men who have lived in Panama feel that no permanent
+success can be assured to such undertakings without the backing of the
+United States government. The officials of Panama naturally do not look
+with enthusiasm upon this idea and prefer to keep development enterprises
+within their own jurisdiction. And serious effort has certainly been made
+by the Panamanian government to support some of the enterprises projected
+by native and foreign capitalists.
+
+[Illustration: WIRELESS AT DARIEN]
+
+The causes of economic backwardness and social conservatism are not
+difficult to locate and describe. From the cruel savagery of Pizarro and
+Balboa to the model communities of the Canal Zone is a far step. In the
+past seventy-five years the city of Panama has passed through a thousand
+years of social evolution, and in five years after Panama became an
+independent and sovereign nation the city was transformed, the government
+reorganized, and something like twentieth-century conditions replaced the
+filth and disease and squalor of the old days.
+
+The prowler in social history will find plenty of material here. By all
+the precedents of progress Panama should have been prosperous centuries
+ago. While other cities of coming metropolitan centers were yet barren
+wastes and sleeping wildernesses Panama was on the highway of the world.
+When New York and San Francisco and Chicago were inhabited by birds and
+squirrels Panama was known everywhere. Panama had a century the start of
+all North America and was the pawn of kings and the gateway of empire
+before the Pilgrims landed in New England. If there be any advantage in an
+early start, Panama should have led us all in the race for a commanding
+position in the New World.
+
+There is much in location. A single foot on Broadway is worth more than a
+farm in the desert. Great cities have great positions on the map, and
+Panama began with a situation to which the world simply had to come. A
+dozen different solutions of the transportation problem presented by the
+Isthmian power and navigation were proposed, but it always came back to
+Panama. Here is the narrowest part of the connecting link of the
+continents, and here is the lowest point in the continental backbone.
+Without lifting her hand or voice, Panama had but to dream and wait till
+the world should come and pour into her lap the commerce and progress of
+the modern age. To-day Panama is on the direct line of travel between
+almost any two great cities at opposite ends of the earth. Melbourne and
+London, New York and Buenos Ayres, Port au Spain and Honolulu--draw the
+lines, and they all pass through Panama.
+
+It is an accepted axiom of unthinking people that gold and prosperity are
+synonymous. If this were true, Panama should be the most prosperous and
+progressive of all cities of the earth to-day. More gold has been carried
+through her streets, and stored in her warehouses, and handled by her
+people, than in any other city of the Americas. The Peru of the Conquest
+was lined and lacquered with gold. The palaces of the Incas and the
+Temples of the Sun were plastered and burnished with gold; and for a
+century this gold was loaded into European ships, taken to Panama and
+packed across the Isthmus and then reshipped to Europe to fill the coffers
+of profligate kings and bolster up the fortunes of fallen states. All of
+it came through Panama; and if much of it did not remain there, it was not
+due to conscientious scruples on the part of the Panamanians. If a stream
+of gold could bring progress, Panama should have led the world for three
+hundred years.
+
+Probably the modern Republic of Panama is one of the very few endowed
+governments in the world. The purchase price of the Canal Zone, invested
+in New York real estate, yields an annual revenue which forms a part of
+the government budget. The annual payment of $250,000 by the Canal Zone
+also helps. Since the beginning of the French Canal enterprise a
+considerable part of the monthly payrolls of the Canal builders has found
+its way into the till of the merchants in Colon and Panama, and these
+terminal cities have largely lived on the Canal Zone trade. Certainly,
+Panama has even to-day some peculiar financial advantages--and if these
+could bring prosperity, Panama should be prosperous.
+
+[Illustration: FARM GRIST MILL, COSTA RICA]
+
+When the California gold rush began in 1848 Panama awoke from her century
+and a half of slumber and trouble began afresh. Again there was gold on
+the Isthmus, and again there was crime. Hundreds of ships discharged their
+cargoes and passengers on one side of the Isthmus, and the trip across was
+one not to be forgotten.
+
+Now that the world has once more had to fight out the old battle of free
+institutions, it is worth while to remember that the oldest independent
+nation of the modern world is Panama; and that the first of the Spanish
+colonies to achieve freedom from the misgovernment of the old country was
+this same little nation on the Isthmus. Tired of the kind of supervision
+which she had been undergoing from Europe, in 1826 Panama revolted, set up
+political housekeeping for herself, until she was later merged with the
+free New Granada--the modern Colombia.
+
+If political independence has anything to do with advancement, then Panama
+should be very advanced indeed, for she led all her neighbors in achieving
+national separateness. The independence movement that swept over the
+western world a century ago affected Panama profoundly, and the microbe of
+political freedom soon produced a well-developed case of revolution--and
+the revolution was a success. Four score years afterward Panama again
+established her independence without the shedding of a drop of blood. If a
+spirit of independence can make a people prosperous, then Panama and
+prosperity should mean the same thing.
+
+Panama has some peculiar political advantages to-day. Where other nations
+maintain their political sovereignty and internal peace at the cost of
+huge sums of money and by means of armies and battleships, Panama is
+spared this enormous drain upon her resources and men and money, and finds
+her political independence guaranteed against all the nations of the
+earth. Likewise she is sure of internal peace and is the only really
+war-tight, revolution-proof country in Latin-America. By the treaty
+entered into between Panama and the United States, in return for the Canal
+Zone and other concessions, the United States guarantees the independence
+of Panama and agrees to step in at any time when it may be necessary and
+maintain order throughout the Isthmus. The Panamanians are not
+enthusiastic over this situation, and some of the politicos inwardly
+resent very bitterly an arrangement which makes impossible their chosen
+profession of agitators and revolutionary leaders.
+
+There are people who tell us that the basis of national progress is
+economic and commercial. Given a land with all large resources, we shall
+perforce have a progressive people. Measured by this standard, Panama
+should lead all the rest. Her thirteen hundred miles of coast bound a
+narrow empire, but an empire of wonderful possibilities. Her inexhaustible
+soil, her frequent rivers, her rich jungles, her broad savanas, her high
+mountains and dense forests, her mines and climate and rainfall, and a
+world market right at her doors--all that nature could do to lay the
+foundations of material wealth seems to have been done here.
+
+If so-called modern science and engineering skill can bring prosperity,
+then the Isthmus of Panama includes the site of the world's last
+achievement in engineering, sanitation, and organized efficiency. Health
+conditions on the Canal Zone are better than in many cities of the United
+States. General Gorgas said that there were three causes for which the
+Americans left Panama in the old days: yellow fever, malaria, and cold
+feet, and that of the three the last caused more desertions than the other
+two combined. It is worth noting that the first two mentioned have now
+vanished entirely, and it but remains to find a preventive for frigid
+pedal extremities to make the tropics a white man's land.
+
+[Illustration: HAPPY KINDERGARTNERS, PANAMA]
+
+Panama and Colon to-day are clean and healthful. Even the tropical buzzard
+that hovers over every town and crossroad in this mid-America world has
+disappeared from these cities--starved to death. The American Board of
+Health looks after the garbage cans and backyards and drains, and woe be
+unto the unhappy mosquito that inadvertently wanders into this forbidden
+territory. The entire country is now free from yellow fever, and while
+there is some malaria in the lowlands during the wet season, health
+conditions are far better than might be supposed.
+
+The question of climate raises visions of burning days and sleepless
+nights. To people who have never lived in the tropics any lurid tale is
+plausible. But these tales of torment do not come from dwellers in the
+tropics, but from overheated imaginations of writers of fiction who find
+the tropics a rich field, because most of their readers know nothing of
+the subject. There are more comfortable days in Panama, per year, than in
+New York. There is rarely a night when one cannot sleep in comfort. If
+there were nothing the matter but the climate, there would be no reason
+for shunning Panama.
+
+By all the rules of the great game of getting rich, Panama ought to be
+both prosperous and progressive. Seemingly every chance has come her way.
+
+Yet the visitor does not find Panama as a whole either rich or energetic.
+The terminal cities, Panama and Colon, have lived pretty well off the
+proceeds of the Canal Zone, but the great interior country is sparsely
+inhabited by people who are neither prosperous nor progressive. Poverty,
+indolence, and dirt abound throughout the provinces. Education is
+attempted, and the present system, when perfected, will afford fairly good
+rudimentary training, but as now conducted it is a promise as well as a
+performance. With a high illiteracy the people of Panama cannot be said to
+live on a lofty intellectual plane. Not one man in a thousand makes the
+slightest attempt to improve the country, or takes the least interest in
+what the world is doing.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG COSTA RICA IS ENTERPRISING]
+
+In the capital city are educated and refined men, both prosperous and
+progressive. Their activities are divided among business enterprises,
+professional callings, and political activity. Very few of these men are
+interested in development projects to any extent. Agriculture as a basis
+of national wealth has little place in their thinking, unless somebody
+else can be induced to attend to the agriculture while they themselves
+take care of the wealth. Working on a farm is all right for ignorantes and
+peons, but has no interest for a gentleman. The development of natural
+resources is not interesting unless it affords a percentage of some sort,
+to be earned without effort. The unfortunate fact is that such modern
+conditions as exist in Panama to-day have largely been brought to her
+ready-made, which may be why she does not take more interest in them.
+
+The question of morals and marriage laws is one which had better be let
+alone unless the prowler is prepared to find some very unpleasant things.
+All children are baptized, and, as before explained, the baptisms are
+registered and classified either as "Legitimo" or "Natural"--the latter,
+of course, being illegitimate. Only thirty per cent of the births of the
+Republic as a whole, are born of married parents. The reasons for this are
+not so simple as may at first appear. Panama has to-day a civil marriage
+law, but unless a man has abundant leisure, endless patience, and can
+afford to hire a lawyer or two, he had better be married somewhere else.
+Evidently, influences were brought to bear upon the framers of the civil
+law which induced them to overload it with requirements that make it
+exceedingly unpopular. No voice of protest is raised against this
+scandalous moral situation on the part of the priests of the established
+church, who merely shrug their shoulders and shake their heads and say,
+"What can you do about it?" Certainly, they themselves do nothing at all
+except to ignore the situation.
+
+There have been physical factors that have militated against the progress
+of Panama. While the climate is comfortable, most of the time it lacks
+stimulus. There is no "kick" in it. Without occasional respites in a
+higher altitude and cooler atmosphere, the man from the north loses his
+driving power and his wife sometimes gets a case of nerves. Four hundred
+years of it will take the energy out of any man; and many of the present
+inhabitants of interior Panama appear to have lived here for about that
+length of time. For the development of high human efficiency it is
+required in a climate that it be something more than comfortable. It
+should at times be uncomfortable, and occasionally exasperating.
+
+[Illustration: WOODEN SUGAR MILL AND ITS MAKER]
+
+The workers of the Rockefeller Foundation have found eighty per cent of
+the people of the provinces afflicted with hookworm. Highly commendable is
+the work done by these representatives of the Institute, but so long as
+the common people know nothing of sanitation, clean and pure food, present
+conditions will continue. And physical "hookworm" is accompanied by a
+similar mental condition. There is a moral hookworm throughout the
+country, and life slumps down to a hand-to-mouth drag from one day to the
+next. Both physical and mental conditions are better in the cities, of
+course, but there is still room for a moral prophylactic.
+
+There are social forces which have largely accounted for this result.
+Possibly no place in the world shows more mixed blood than Panama. Shades
+and colors and tints and tones there are, and blends indescribable and
+also impossible to analyze or trace. The artists tell us that the
+combination of the primary colors with white results in a tint, while
+blending a primary color with black gives a shade. Well, most of these
+tones are shades, for the same scientific reason as that mentioned by the
+artist. From the Caribbean world has come its contribution of the West
+Indian Negroes, with consequent shady result.
+
+The social results of this mixture are various and distressing, but well
+understood by anyone who has lived in the interior of Panama. Even the
+cities are affected in the same way. Social standing, political
+availability, and personal influence are largely determined by the degree
+of whiteness--or darkness--that prevails in the skin. And the general
+desire of the ignorant and unmoral native of the interior to "lighten up
+the breed" has led to a moral situation that bodes no good for the
+away-from-home white man who may be living for a longer or shorter time in
+the up-country provinces.
+
+Any aggressive North American, especially if he be from the West, looks
+upon the splendid areas of land, the fine rivers, the dense forests, and
+the other untouched resources of this rich country with amazement, and
+begins to plan development projects and dream of organizing syndicates,
+but the native loses no sleep over such vain imaginings. If he dreams at
+all, it is of his food if he be poor, and of politics if he be rich.
+Development in the North American sense is a disgrace, and no job for a
+gentleman. The smooth savanas may lie there untouched till kingdom come,
+for all he cares. The only interest in life is political manipulation. Law
+and politics are the two occupations most esteemed, and Panama is not
+different from other countries in the frequent association of these two
+professions.
+
+Whence comes this emphasis on political activity, to the neglect of
+commerce and agriculture? It comes from Europe with the early inheritance
+of the first settlements and rulers of this Latin world. For them any form
+of physical work was dire disgrace. "These two hands have never done an
+hour's work" was a boast and badge of quality. The climate of the tropics
+made this philosophy of life easy to accept and follow, and what the
+leaders lived the followers did faithfully keep and perform. Of course
+somebody had to do a little work and raise a few vegetables and cattle,
+but the game was to find the unfortunate worker and then take away from
+him the product of his toil. Thus the getter lived without work and taught
+the loser the uselessness of further exercise.
+
+By way of clearness these conditions are here described in their worst and
+final form. Bad as they are, they are not the whole truth. It takes more
+than mixed blood and hookworm and snobbishness to account for the present
+social conditions of Central America.
+
+If moral conditions in Panama to-day are not ideal, it is not due to any
+absence of church or lack of religion. With the explorers and conquerors
+of the sixteenth century came the missionaries and priests. Crosses were
+set up, bells were hung, masses were said, and everywhere the elaborate
+ritual of the Spanish church was maintained. Whole villages were
+"converted," baptized, and labeled as good Catholics in a day's time.
+Massive and beautiful churches were soon built in centers of population,
+and every village has its church, often representing nearly as much value
+as half of the houses of the town combined.
+
+From the beginning until the coming of the North American to finish the
+Canal the Roman Church has had exclusive and uninterrupted occupation of
+this entire territory. There has been no competition, and there have been
+no interferences with her moral and spiritual leadership.
+
+[Illustration: PUBLIC MARKET, DAVID]
+
+But in spite of this situation, or perhaps because of it, moral conditions
+are what they are in Panama to-day. Out of the closed Bible and the bound
+consciences of this system have come social incapacity and intellectual
+helplessness in all the fields of human activity. Most of Latin-America
+has not yet learned that the intellect, like the nation, cannot exist half
+slave and half free. Only free consciences can guide free citizens to the
+founding of free political institutions and social activities. A
+successful democracy can never be reared upon a foundation of superstition
+and spiritual despotism. More than all other factors this moral blight and
+spiritual dry-rot is what is the matter with Panama. The moral and
+spiritual climate of a people has more to do with the growth or
+destruction of a spirit of progress than do thermometers and telephones
+and declarations of independence. Until the spirit of a Panamanian becomes
+a free spirit and he is permitted to think and worship after the dictates
+of a free conscience, Panama can never become a progressive nation.
+
+Highly favored among the nations of the earth, this little country affords
+a strategic opportunity for the setting up of a national experiment in
+development and progress. If this undertaking is to succeed, there must be
+added to the large economic, social, and strategic resources of the
+country the element of a free spirit and an enlightened conscience. Out of
+these will come a sense of the dignity of labor, the worth-whileness of
+education, and the development of the now dormant resources of this
+beautiful land.
+
+The problem of progress in Panama is inevitably linked with that of
+Protestantism. Work was begun by the Methodist Episcopal Church in Colon
+under Bishop William Taylor, and a strong West Indian congregation was
+gathered. This was later turned over to the Wesleyan Methodists, who
+maintain considerable work among the West Indians of the Caribbean
+Islands. With the purchase of the Canal Zone by the United States, the
+Methodists began to plan for work in Panama and eventually established a
+Spanish church and school at the head of Central Avenue, opposite the
+national palace. But no serious effort was made by this denomination to
+meet and master the problems that arose from exclusive Protestant
+occupation of the Spanish-speaking section of the field until the time of
+the noted Panama Congress in February, 1916. Here met representatives of
+the Protestant movement in all Latin-America, and general principles of
+comity and cooperation were established and adopted. Under this working
+agreement, the Spanish work in the Republic of Panama was assigned to the
+Methodists as a unit of responsibility. To this area Costa Rica was later
+added. West Indian work was not included in this survey, and it is to be
+hoped that some similar representative and authoritative body may yet
+undertake to bring order and comity out of the unorganized, though
+friendly, confusion of West Indian denominational programs now existent.
+
+The Pan-Denominational Congress of 1916 made definite the responsibility
+for Spanish work in Panama, and the denomination now in charge of this
+field is working on a program somewhat adequate to the strategic
+importance of the very conspicuous location beside the Canal Zone. When
+fully realized and in operation, this program of work will wield a wide
+influence in the Spanish-American world. A large factor in this new
+program has been the interest and enthusiasm of the young people of the
+California Conference Epworth League, who have done much to make possible
+an enlargement of the work undertaken.
+
+Too much praise cannot be given to the earnest and efficient missionaries
+who founded and have maintained this mission. The Seawall Church has
+already sent out its influences to the ends of the earth. The standards
+and results attained in Panama College, so far as that institution has
+been developed, have exerted a strong influence on the educational and
+moral life of the city and of the republic. The work in 1919 included a
+Spanish base at the Seawall location, with its church and school, and
+American congregation, a West Indian school and church in Guachapali, a
+Spanish mission Sunday school and evangelistic service in the school
+building kindly loaned by the Wesleyans, a Spanish mission school and
+preaching service in Guachapali, a West Indian Sunday school and service
+at Red Tank, and a Chinese mission near the market. Present plans for
+future expansion include, in addition to the work now under way at David,
+an adequate program of interior education and evangelization, an
+industrial and agricultural school, a strong institution church in Panama,
+an institution of higher education, and adequate work in Colon.
+
+This mission shares with the Northern Baptist Convention and the Northern
+Presbyterian Church denominational responsibility for most of Central
+America. The Baptists have work in Honduras, Salvador, and the
+Presbyterians in Guatemala and in Colombia, further south. The Methodists
+complete the chain by the occupation of Panama and Costa Rica, in which
+latter republic work was begun in the latter months of 1917. Costa Rica
+presents an attractive field with its good climate, fertile country,
+Spanish-speaking population of intelligence, and large capacity for
+progress. The new mission met with success from the start and promises
+rapid growth.
+
+The three denominations named are working together in complete harmony and
+have developed a unified program of Christian education for Central
+America, as the beginnings of further coordination of effort. There is no
+overlapping, no competition, and, above all, no overcrowding, in this
+promising but sparsely occupied field. The Protestant denominational front
+on this field is well unified.
+
+There are several independent missions working in this field, some of
+which do not find it in their purposes to unite in any general movement,
+and none of which place emphasis on education. Chief among these is the
+Central America Mission which maintains workers in all the republics of
+Central America who confine themselves largely to evangelistic effort.
+
+All of the Central republics have constitutional religious liberty, and
+the work of Protestantism is officially welcome everywhere. Of petty
+persecutions and ecclesiastical opposition there are numerous examples.
+The spirit of the Inquisition still smolders beneath the surface, but the
+new spirit of world-democracy makes more and more grotesque and futile the
+intolerance and bigotry of the Dark Ages.
+
+Protestantism in Latin-America has been in the van of every movement
+toward progress and has contributed much toward the foundations of the new
+era. Without the Protestant movement, the present state of advance would
+be impossible. To-day Protestantism is in the anomalous position of being
+inadequate in equipment and manpower to meet the situation created or to
+supply the demands arising everywhere for adequate expression of free
+institutions. The lump is large and the leaven has been small, but the
+contagion of liberty and the awakening of conscience demand an adequate
+equipment and program.
+
+There is promise of a new and worthy approach in the large purposes of the
+great denominations to undertake in adequate manner a program of
+world-reconstruction made imperative by the close of the great war. The
+collapse of all but moral and spiritual forces as a guarantee of peace
+renders all former alignments obsolete and forces the church to new
+methods and more comprehensive undertakings. It is now resolved to go up
+and possess this goodly land on the mere borders of which we have lingered
+for nearly a century. The coming generation will see a reorganization and
+reconstruction of the Protestant program in Latin-America, and before the
+end of the twentieth century this mighty continent will have attained a
+noble citizenship in the neighborhood of great races.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS
+
+
+Whatever the cause or results, the fact stands that we are not well
+acquainted with our nearest national neighbors. Like the modern
+city-dweller, we know least about those who live nearest. The North
+American knows more about the other side of the world than he does about
+those who live on the same continent with him. Neither the North American
+nor his southern neighbor has treated the other fairly.
+
+Many of us have not yet discovered that there be any Latin-American. Some
+one lives south of the line, of course, but that fact has made little
+impression on our minds. In our mental geography the American world shades
+off into a hazy and troubled region southward about which we have known
+little and cared less. Our geographical studies have helped us but little.
+It is possible to know every physical fact about a country without knowing
+the hearts of the people.
+
+It is an anomaly that we know less about our Latin neighbors than we do of
+Europe or Asia. By historical ties and constant reminders of commerce and
+immigration we are aware of our transatlantic cousins. We have discovered
+the Far East and have some interest therein, even though it be the
+interest pertaining to a museum or a menagerie. But until very recently
+neither immigration, commerce, nor curiosity has stirred us to
+acquaintance with our continental neighbors.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN BOY GOES TO SCHOOL]
+
+This ignorance is part of our general antebellum attitude toward all the
+world lying south and east. In fact, we never bothered much with anybody
+outside of the United States. Over a century we lived on, secure in the
+idea that we were immune from European militaristic contagion and
+all-sufficient unto ourselves. The rest of the world might perchance sink
+into the sea, but we would go on blissfully without it. Our "free
+institutions" were self-sufficient and all-inclusive. And because we were
+able to compose our own troubles and keep out of other peoples' quarrels,
+more or less, we assumed that we were automatically superior to the rest
+of the world, "of course."
+
+We of the United States have been likened unto a householder living on a
+plot of ground rich enough to support his family. Resolving not to become
+entangled in neighborhood alliances, he constructed a hundred-foot wall
+about his property and lived securely within. The right-hand neighbor
+might be an anarchist and the man on the left a cannibal. If the man in
+the rear were a polygamist and the dweller across the street had a habit
+of using firearms indiscriminately it mattered nothing to the
+householder--so long as the wall held. But it came to pass that an
+earthquake destroyed that wall, and the said exclusive citizen suddenly
+found himself out on the street with his neighbors. And behold, it
+mattered much what sort of neighbors they were. There was nothing to do
+but get acquainted and help make the neighborhood a decent place in which
+to live.
+
+Since the world war has battered down the wall with which we sought to
+separate ourselves from other nations, we have nothing left but to
+recognize and accept our place in the national neighborhood and do our
+share to make it decent.
+
+The Latin-American has been at a disadvantage in the character of the
+continent in which he lives. South America is a land for promoters,
+organizers of industry, hardy pioneers of production, engineers, planters,
+and rugged explorers of commercial frontiers. The poetic and artistic
+temperament of the Latin has suffered an unfair criticism because of the
+ill adaptation of his temperament to his environment. Sunny Italy and
+picturesque France and vine-clad Spain were more to his tastes and
+abilities. That he has done as well as he has speaks much for his
+adaptability to a situation better suited to a more executive type of
+character. Give him a chance in his own best environment and he shows
+capacity of high achievement.
+
+[Illustration: WASHDAY IN COSTA RICA]
+
+Probably the two most arrogant travelers have been the Englishman and the
+American, but our British cousins have assumed their superiority with
+silent contempt, while the newly rich America globe-trotters have vaunted
+their ignorance from the piazzas of every tourist hotel and upon the
+steamer decks of every sea. It is really not strange that we failed to
+notice the very considerable and important populations of countries lying
+at our doors.
+
+The North Americans are not travelers. Few of us do go anywhere, and fewer
+still know how to travel successfully. The poorest traveler in the world
+is the society tourist who goes about trying to reproduce home conditions
+in a foreign land. So far as possible he escapes the life and message of
+the country in which he sojourns and returns with little else but tales of
+social functions, a la American, and comparative accounts of expenses at
+tourist hotels. From the first day out he isolates and fortifies himself
+against the very things that travel alone can give. He brings home a few
+trinkets made to sell, some cocksure criticisms of customs, people, and
+missionaries, and a swelled head. But he has been abroad--save the mark!
+
+Travel is a specific for provincialism, but it must be real travel and not
+imitation home-swagger. Intelligent and sympathetic travel breaks up the
+hardening strata of thought, pushes back the narrowing horizon, loosens
+the set fibers of the soul, and is the surest cure yet known for mental
+arterial sclerosis. The right kind of travel shifts the viewpoint,
+readjusts life forces, and shakes up the provincialism of the man with the
+"township horizon." And when the disturbed atoms of character reassemble
+it is in a different mode and with a new cycle.
+
+It is to be said that the South American has not taken much interest in
+us. Since he has made out to get along without us, he cannot be very
+important. The Oriental has shown some desire to move into our basement,
+or at least the woodshed or the washhouse, and we have discovered him. The
+European has shown his good taste by coming over and moving right in with
+us, and in time we cannot distinguish him from ourselves. But the South
+American has gone his way, and in the main has minded his own affairs, and
+therefore cannot amount to much. If he were a social problem, we would
+know him better. If he had a penchant for the police force or an itch for
+office among us, we would cultivate his acquaintance, and perhaps invite
+him to call.
+
+During the past two decades the once despised Chinese have become popular
+among us. Their utter difference from ourselves, their solid human
+qualities, their marvelous vitality, their commercial solidarity, their
+response to the stimuli of the modern world, their astonishing
+versatility, their wonderful national history--these and a hundred other
+things stir our imagination, and we have rather suddenly discovered that
+we like the Chinese--especially at a distance.
+
+We are well aware of Japan, not so much through any perceptions of our own
+as through Japan's insistence upon attention. We can on short notice make
+out a rather comprehensive list of Japanese characteristics, and, in
+truth, we find Japan interesting. The marvelous energy of her people, her
+high ambitions, her Oriental viewpoint, her great commercial and military
+successes, her artistic setting, her marvelous skill of hand, and, not
+least, her abundant interest in our own affairs--these and other items
+make it quite the thing to be interested in Japan. But who cares anything
+about a lot of dirty peons? They are not in good form.
+
+But this interest in the Orient is more curiosity than it is race
+sympathy. There is a great gulf fixed between the yellow man and the
+white, and racially that gulf can never be bridged. The occasional
+marriages between the East and West need no comment; they tell their own
+story. Neither China nor Japan can ever become American in any racial
+sense. When Chinese and Japanese come to America for any but educational
+and temporary purposes, they set up Chinatown and little Japan wherever
+they go. American character is a most complicated composite of many races,
+but from Tokyo to Bombay there is no Oriental factor that will blend with
+the mixture of races that makes up America.
+
+Our Oriental interest is confined to the races that have impressed
+themselves upon our imagination. The Philippines, in spite of our national
+relation to the islands, do not seem to us very real nor very important.
+They will soon be keeping house for themselves, and then we shall forget
+them except as an interesting historical incident. And as for India, that
+is British, and about all we know is that the Hindu wears a turban,
+maintains a very undemocratic caste, exists in unaccountable numbers, is
+subject to annoying and frequent famines, and on the whole is a rather
+helpless lot, except as some bearded fakir entertains companies of badly
+balanced American society women with hyperbolated essence of sublimated
+nonsense.
+
+[Illustration: RIVERSIDE PLANTATION]
+
+But the Latin-American is blood of our blood, kin of our kind, and lives
+on the same continental street, which is why we are so little interested
+in him. He is neither quaint, curious, nor crazy. He is not good for
+first-page headlines except when he breaks out in revolution or forgets
+our Monroe Doctrine. There is no fixed gulf of difference between him and
+us, and in the final fusing of American character he must contribute a
+large part.
+
+To ignore the Latin-American is to be convicted of historical ignorance.
+From Dante to the great South American leaders and scholars of to-day the
+Latin races have been neither sleeping nor idle. During the last five
+hundred years more than one half of Western history has been made by Latin
+races. It was a Latin who discovered America. Another first sailed around
+the globe. Latin peoples explored, conquered, and settled both Western
+continents, and gave a language which has become the permanent speech of
+two thirds of the Western world. To call the roll of artists, painters,
+sculptors, poets, dramatists, novelists, musicians, explorers,
+missionaries, and scientists for the past five centuries is to prove that
+a majority of the names mentioned in the world's illustrious hall of fame
+are from Latin races. To mention Cure, Pasteur, and Marconi is to remind
+us of the scientific progress of modern Latin minds, and to speak of
+France and Italy as pioneers in democracy is to keep within the facts. It
+was in Italy that Browning and Tennyson and George Eliot and a host of
+other writers found inspiration and material to feed the fires of genius.
+
+Whatever may be said of the modern degeneracy of the dominant religious
+system of Latin-American countries, it is true that the sixteenth century
+saw in Spain one of the most virile and comprehensive missionary movements
+of all history. Never before nor since have missionary efforts been
+projected on so vast a scale or by so powerful procedure. Monks and
+priests went out and established the cross and the confessional through
+the Western world and in the islands of the sea, and, whatever else we may
+say, there can be no disparagement of the permanency of the results of
+these conquests. The Latin world is still dominantly Roman in its
+religious life, and shows very positive preferences for the religion of
+the conquistadores. To give a language and a religion to two thirds of the
+American continents is not the work of weaklings nor of degenerates.
+
+This Latin neighbor of ours not only lives on the same street but he lives
+in a bigger and better house than ours. To the "lick-all-creation" type of
+Fourth-of-July American this is rank heresy, but facts have little regard
+for fireworks. With twenty-eight per cent of the population of the
+Americas, the Latin holds sixty-five per cent of the territory and fully
+the same proportion of natural resources. His soil, his rivers, his
+mountains, his harbors, his mines are as good as ours, and he has more of
+them. In the western hemisphere he controls the longest rivers, the
+highest mountains, the largest area of habitable land, the longest
+seacoast, and the entire inexhaustible fertility of the tropics. His
+untouched and uncharted natural resources are beyond computation. His
+estate is second to none in the entire world, and he could spare enough
+for the crowded millions of India or the swarming islands of Japan and
+never miss it. All of this we would have discovered sooner but for the
+world war, which focused all attention on the main issue and postponed the
+direct results of the successful completion of the Panama Canal. With a
+normal supply of shipping, the west coast alone of South America would
+keep the Canal busy much of the time and affect American markets
+profoundly.
+
+[Illustration: JUNGLE PRODUCTS]
+
+In material achievements our neighbor has not been idle, though some of
+his attempts have resulted in failure or fiasco. He has built great and
+beautiful cities, he has constructed long and difficult railroads over
+tortuous mountain systems, he has developed huge industries and organized
+big commercial enterprises. He has produced a civilization in keeping with
+his character, artistic, homogeneous, progressive, and on a high
+intellectual plane. His libraries, theaters, and public buildings are a
+credit to his taste and skill, and his churches are massive and stately as
+the rock-ribbed mountains that tie together the whole system from El Paso
+to Patagonia.
+
+We have heard more or less of a Pan-Americanism, but we have never taken
+it seriously. As subject for diplomatic papers, magazine articles, and
+after-dinner oratory the all-America idea has been a refuge of
+word-venders. But so long as the bulk of South American trade was with
+Europe our brand of fraternal talk was harmless--also helpless; and the
+reason for our failure to do business with South America has not been
+entirely the neglect of our shippers. The larger exports of South America
+have all been to Europe, and with ships loaded both ways the American
+exporter was hopelessly handicapped in his effort to secure favorable
+freight rates. When American salesmen tried to compete with German and
+French and Spanish exporters they always failed to secure freight rates
+that gave them an even chance.
+
+For years American manufacturers ignored the Orient and lagged far behind
+European dealers in the same class of goods, to their own large loss. The
+same neglect has produced the same result in South America. Germany
+pursued a very different policy. Without trumpet or flag Germany sent her
+agents to practically every Latin-American center and seaport, and there
+the unostentatious German proceeded to control as much business as
+possible, and generally get hold of the situation. Often he took unto
+himself a wife of the country, but never for one day did he forget that he
+was a representative of the Vaterland. His house, his furniture, his
+methods, his ideas were one hundred per cent German. An American ship
+doctor went ashore from a German liner in a small South American seaport
+and stumbled upon the inevitable German man of business. He was invited
+home to dinner and shown through the house with much pride by the
+half-German children. One after the other, furniture, books, pictures,
+clothing even were exhibited and with every article was repeated the
+formula, "Es war in Deutschland gemacht." It was a great game, and it was
+working along smoothly until things slipped in Europe, and now the end no
+man can see. But there is going to be a great chance for American capital
+and enterprise and business energy in the years when German energy will be
+needed at home.
+
+In one of the Central American republics an American, while present at a
+social function, remarked casually to a friend that in his opinion the
+cure for the political upheavals of that country would be in the polite
+but firm intervention of the United States. A German business man,
+overhearing the remark, hastily interposed, "Not at all, sir; that is what
+Germany is in this country for." With a concerted and well-considered
+policy of business extension in South American countries Germany deserved
+the commercial advantages that she had gained in the twenty-five years
+preceding the war period.
+
+When questioned as to the remarkable success of the German commercial
+propaganda, South American leaders rarely fail to mention the fact that
+the German business man in Latin lands invariably speak the language of
+the country. Catalogues are issued in Spanish or Portuguese, as local
+conditions require. Measures, technical terms, and methods of handling
+goods are all adapted to local usage, and the South American merchant is
+considered and consulted in all the mechanism of exchange and handling of
+goods. Contrasted with North American ignorance of conditions and ignoring
+of language and custom, it is not strange that Europe has controlled the
+trade of Latin-America.
+
+In view of all that is involved of national development, international
+entanglements, commercial expansion, and racial affinity, it would seem to
+be about time that we become acquainted with our neighbors, or, rather, in
+our neighborhood. If we are going to live on this great American highway,
+it may be well to be on good terms with the rest of the folks.
+
+Aside from commercial and linguistic considerations, there are four
+reasons for our ignorance of the lands and people south of the United
+States.
+
+1. The American people are not well acquainted with any other people on
+earth. Geographical isolation has had much to do with this, and racial
+self-sufficiency has had still more effect upon our lack-of-thinking about
+our neighbors. Had South and Central American countries been pouring
+millions of immigrants into our cities, we would know something about
+them, but the Latin has had no need to immigrate, since he has more room
+in his own house than he could find in ours.
+
+2. American travel abroad has been practically all to Europe, with an
+increasing number who have seen something of the Far East. And it is
+impossible to be anything but densely ignorant of any people whose faces
+we have never seen, whose country we have never visited, whose history we
+have ignored, and whose language we cannot understand. No real interest is
+possible without knowledge, and the main trouble between the American and
+his neighbors is plain ignorance.
+
+3. The war with Spain in 1898 resulted in much indifferent prejudice on
+our part against everything Spanish. Spain was not prepared for the blow
+that fell upon her, and perhaps her colonial system deserved the
+destruction that was administered, but we came out of the war with a more
+or less good-natured contempt for anything and everything that savored of
+Spain. We escaped with little or no spirit of hatred or lust of conquest,
+but we marked down the Latin world at bargain prices--and then let Europe
+walk away with the bargain. As a matter of fact, Spain has little to do
+with the American situation. Spain herself in the past fifteen years has
+made rapid strides forward, but in the average American mind anything
+Spanish cannot be very efficient.
+
+4. Our Monroe Doctrine has begotten a certain arrogance of attitude toward
+all our southern neighbors. Our attention has been called southward only
+when revolution or anarchy or European interference has compelled us to
+take a hand for our own ultimate self-protection. It is only when our
+neighbors have failed to keep the peace and have threatened to carry their
+quarrels into our yard, or have been in danger of being beaten up by
+European military police, that we have taken the trouble to notice them.
+From this situation it was inevitable that an attitude of patronage should
+arise, and patronage is not a basis of national cooperation or mutual
+understanding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE FAMILY TREE
+
+
+When came this Latin-American? Is he a mystery, a complex, or a racial
+conundrum defying analysis and baffling understanding? So many people have
+said. Others have reported a something impossible to name or describe
+about this man from the southlands--all of which is nonsense. There are
+few human mysteries when once we have the key. Any people may be
+understood if we know their racial origin, social history, and
+reaction-power. Such knowledge usually explains these so-called race
+peculiarities.
+
+As North Americans we are ourselves the present product of social forces
+that have driven us for centuries past. With a northern European race
+origin we have been mixed in many molds and infused with many tinctures
+till we emerge a new blend of blood. This new and vigorous stock shows a
+reaction-power that has made much of educational, scientific, and material
+opportunities, but, after all, these traits themselves are largely the
+result of the social stimuli of the past five hundred years. Had our
+ancestors in the sixteenth century removed to Spain, we should all now be
+Spanish dons.
+
+If we could know the social, religious, intellectual, domestic,
+industrial, and political environment of a people, we could account for
+ninety per cent of race characteristics. And this social history measures,
+not only potent forces and compelling sanctions, but itself in turn
+registers reactive power and character values.
+
+[Illustration: SAN BLAS INDIAN CHIEF]
+
+The Latin-American has no cause to apologize nor explain when we inquire
+into his racial antecedents. Out of the remote ages of antiquity a branch
+of the human family moved westward, and on the Italian peninsula developed
+a civilization and founded a city that in time dominated the world. The
+lust of conquest and the intoxication of power debauched the rulers of
+Rome, but the rising Christian Church took over the scepter, and for
+fifteen hundred years Rome dominated the civilization of the world.
+Fundamentally, there was no difference between the blood of southern and
+western Europe, and but for the corrupt and demoralizing influence of the
+papacy and its trailing blight upon the human spirit Rome might still have
+been the dominant power of European civilization. The abuses that
+compelled the Reformation also vitiated the Latin spirit. The wakening
+life of the sixteenth century shifted the center westward but the blight
+of papal despotism kept the Latin races from their full share in the
+developments and democracy of the modern age. And now that the Teutonic
+peoples of the north have become the victims of the most deadly despotism
+that the world has yet produced, it is possible that the center and motive
+of progressive thought in continental Europe may again swing to the
+southern peoples.
+
+[Illustration: NO RACE SUICIDE HERE]
+
+No one can trace the splendid march of the Latin races through the
+conquests and explorations and discoveries of the later fifteenth and
+sixteenth centuries and then read the record of achievements down to the
+present time and still maintain that there is anything decadent about the
+Latin races. Had the Roman yoke been broken from the Latin neck as it was
+from the Teuton, we should have had a very different tale to tell, and the
+dominant civilization of the twentieth century might have been Latin
+instead of Saxon.
+
+A closer examination of the social factors that have dominated the
+Latin-American world and produced the present composite result on the
+western hemisphere reveals three decisive factors that have in combination
+produced our neighbors.
+
+All Latin-America reflects a European background. Nearly all relations of
+life are defined in European terms. Out of the more or less subconscious
+inheritance and ideals of European origin arise the sanctions of social
+relations. Ideals of politics, business, education, home life, social
+customs, and religion all come from this fountain of associations. The
+church in South America is the church in southern Europe. The collegio is
+not the North American college, but the European school which grants a
+Bachelor of Arts degree at what corresponds to the end of the freshman
+year in an American college. South American "republics" have their "prime
+ministers," and the electorate is on the European basis. The presidents of
+some of these republics exercise more arbitrary power than the king of
+England or the entire executive of the United States. They are European
+"presidents." Revolution is not the incurable habit of the "people" but
+the profession of a few adventurers who oppress and afflict the
+long-suffering and usually silent populace. This is not saying that
+revolution is a characteristic of European political procedure, but that
+the forms of representative government imposed upon the ideals of
+dictatorship and monarchy produced the curious mixture of revolutionary
+political progress known as a South or Central American "republic." South
+American democracy is a hybrid product of European ideals and American
+forms of government. Naturally enough, it is neither one thing nor the
+other, and will not be anything very different until new forces are
+brought to bear upon the political life of the Latin people.
+
+[Illustration: JUNGLE GUIDE]
+
+A second factor in the making of the Latin-American is his isolation for
+three hundred years from the currents of Western economic and political
+life. Practically all our North American stock of ideas and social
+sanctions has been developed since the Pilgrims landed in New England. The
+great basic impulse that sent men and women westward in search of
+religious liberty has persisted and widened and developed a homogeneous
+system of political ideal that has become the unquestioned background of
+our whole political system. From free consciences have come free
+institutions, free schools, free votes, and as long as it lasted, free
+land, unrestricted economic opportunity, and a welcome to the world. Upon
+this foundation have been reared American independence, modern democracy,
+higher education, the feminist movement, scientific advance, and American
+Protestantism.
+
+[Illustration: ONE USE FOR A HEAD]
+
+Certain influences from this stream have affected Latin-American life. The
+nomenclature of South American politics is that of the United States, and
+many constitutions contain provision for every modern practice. But these
+model constitutions are like a beautiful and costly piano imported into a
+home where no one knows how to use it. It takes a democratic spirit to get
+democracy out of a democratic constitution. The best piano yields only
+discord, and the most advanced constitution does not prevent revolution if
+there be no musicians or statesmen to play and administer. People living
+beside the stream of democratic progress have caught the names and forms
+drifting on the current, but only those people have advanced with the
+current who have not been tied to the shore by moral and intellectual
+despotism.
+
+The influence of geographical nearness is slight beside that of historical
+background and social relations. Mexico is much closer to Spain than to
+the United States. After twenty years of successful administration of the
+Philippines on the most colossal scale of national benevolence that the
+world has ever seen, nearly all the Filipinos who had reached maturity in
+1898 are still Spanish at heart and out of sympathy with American ideals
+and administration. If the United States can hold the islands until every
+person who was ten years old or over in 1898 is thoroughly dead and safely
+buried, there will be a chance for some form of democracy, but the
+old-time leaders will retain so long as they live the ideals derived from
+three hundred years of Spanish administration.
+
+If there are in the mountains of the South isolated neighborhoods that
+have been passed by in the current of modern American progress, and are
+to-day practically ignorant of all that makes up American life, even
+though surrounded on all sides by the march of a virile and restless race,
+what must be the results of the isolation from this stream of North
+American development, of the whole Latin-American race, while maintaining
+close and vital connections with European standards and ideals?
+
+But Latin Americanism can never be explained merely by its European
+background and its isolation from the progress of North America. The
+keynote to the present product in Latin lands is to be found in that
+system of religious despotism that has checked the free growth of every
+people whose life it has dominated.
+
+[Illustration: BEGGARS AND CATHEDRALS]
+
+Jesuitism is what is the matter with the civilization southward. We have
+had Romanism and Jesuitism in the United States, but people who have never
+seen any form of these forces except that which has developed in the free
+air of North America have much to learn. Romanism checked and balanced by
+a virile Protestantism and a democratic political life is an altogether
+different institution from Romanism dominant, degenerate, and intolerant.
+The latter becomes the religion of the bound Bible, the chained spirit,
+and the crippled conscience. It is the center of spiritual infection and
+the microbe of moral weakness. No land has ever advanced under its
+leadership. Like a blight on the human spirit, it has cast its spell of
+ignorance and superstition over the millions of men and women who have had
+no other ethical code or spiritual leadership.
+
+It has been claimed that the rigors of New England winters had something
+to do with the sturdy New England conscience. But the Pilgrims brought
+their consciences with them, and the climate came near exterminating the
+colony. If the Pilgrims had landed in Cuba and the Spanish in Boston,
+civilization might be very different to-day. If rigorous climates produce
+vigorous men, how is it that some of the most terrible of men sailed the
+Caribbean sea and devastated the whole mid-American world, while the
+northern coasts of the Atlantic never saw a pirate's sail? The tropical
+zephyrs of the Bay of Panama never softened the tempers or dispositions of
+the bloodthirsty men who came near exterminating whole populations and
+left a trail of blood and terror behind them. And these same
+unconscionable scoundrels used to attend mass and plant wooden crosses
+wherever they went.
+
+The effort to account for South American civilization by climate falls to
+pieces before the splendid and bracing altitudes of the Andes, the ideal
+conditions of Argentine, Uruguay, and Chile, and the delightful regions of
+the higher elevations of Central America. There is nothing inherently
+demoralizing in the climate of lands inhabited by the Latin peoples in
+America, but there is something distinctly vitiating in the moral miasma
+breathed by these peoples for three hundred years. If cold climates
+produced inflexible consciences, the Eskimos ought to be the most
+conscientious people on earth. But the moral climate of Jesuitism has
+produced a uniform effect everywhere that it has supplied the soil for
+soul-growth.
+
+[Illustration: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD]
+
+It is impossible to grow liberty of life, apart from its natural soil and
+necessary nourishment. If we are to have free institutions, we must first
+have free men. We cannot have a stream of water without a flowing
+fountain, nor ripe fruit without a living tree. Political liberty is
+impossible without moral freedom, and it is idle to expect independence of
+political action without the established right to think for oneself. When
+consciences are forced into fixed and prescribed molds it is useless to
+ask that men turn about and practice the principles of a free democracy.
+Majority rule is meaningless where the confessional dominates the
+consciences of men. If we apply these factors in the social history and
+life of the Latin-American to the traits of his development most subject
+to criticism, we find much illumination. Out of all the discussion three
+items emerge, each significant and each closely related to the factors
+just mentioned.
+
+The Latin mind is given to an idealism that reaches out for large things
+but often stops short of large actual realization. Out of this tendency
+grow weak initiative and superficial standards. As evidence of this
+characteristic may be cited the tendency in education to stress the
+superficial and showy features of the curriculum, leaving in the
+background the foundations and essentials of the intellectual life.
+Anything that makes a good appearance is given place over the less
+spectacular realities. In architecture, a florid ornamentation is
+achieved, even at the expense of good plaster and proper surface stone,
+later with the resultant unsightliness.
+
+[Illustration: SEAWALL CHURCH AND SCHOOL, PANAMA]
+
+Deductive processes of thought are much in evidence. In outlining a plan
+of provincial government, or a system of national education, the paper
+plans will include every needed feature of a complete and theoretical
+system, without much regard for the local needs and actual conditions
+under which the full scheme is to be realized, which in all probability it
+will never be. To have projected and announced a grand undertaking in any
+department of human life is as important as to have accomplished
+something. It is the grand-piano constitution and the one-finger
+administration. It is not hard to find automobile undertakings and
+wheelbarrow accomplishments.
+
+Now, all this is not cause for railing accusation but for thoughtful
+analysis. And the dominant cause is not far to seek. Where effort to
+translate ideals into realities is met by a barrier of official
+indifference, it is not strange if men give their time to dreaming rather
+than actualizing their visions. Where belief and conduct are prescribed
+and commercialism dominates the moral lives of men, it is easy to see that
+initiative is crippled at its source. Where a people is divested of
+responsibility for the final outcome and taught to pay the price and
+"believe or be damned," it is a rash spirit that will try to do more than
+dream dreams and write books and project utopias. Without the incentive of
+encouragement to produce practical results, no real efficiency has ever
+appeared among any people. There are accusations of moral duplicity among
+Latin-American peoples. More serious and fundamental than impotent
+idealism, this defect registers itself in perversion of public trust, in
+the degradation of public office to the uses of private gain, in
+deception, graft, and greed. Promises are easy, but performances are
+delayed until the would-be enterprising citizen gives up in despair.
+
+In regard to this two things are to be said. In the first place, our own
+records as a people will not bear any too close inspection. Aside from
+race riots and labor disturbances, our Civil War furnishes our only
+revolution, except the one that produced the original United States. But
+when it comes to political prostitution of public office and the invention
+of grafting schemes, large and small, our own history does not give us
+much ground for boasting. And many a "revolution" has caused less
+bloodshed than a North American labor row.
+
+[Illustration: MANDY DID HER SHARE]
+
+Further, so far as there is a difference between the conduct of the North
+and South, the explanation is not far to seek. Once admit the validity of
+the principle that it is right to do wrong for a good end, and a whole
+stream of moral duplicity is turned loose in public and private life.
+Jesuitism will account for almost any moral lapse in a land where all
+thinking has come under the spell of a creed in which the end justifies
+the means.
+
+[Illustration: THE CANAL DIGGER]
+
+Let this principle be ever so carefully guarded and proscribed, so long as
+human nature remains what it is, where personal interests are at stake the
+individual is going to be his own final judge of the value of the end for
+which the means are devised. And on the basis of every man adapting means
+to his own ends we have moral chaos.
+
+Much has been said of the personal immorality of many people of these
+southern lands. That the Latin-American is in any whit behind his northern
+neighbor in the integrity of his personal and domestic life remains to be
+proven. That his deflections from the straight and narrow path are much
+less concealed and by him are regarded as of small account is to be
+conceded. Here, again, the cause is not far to seek. With a sacerdotal
+example loose and irresponsible, it would be strange indeed if the men of
+South America showed a higher personal chastity than their spiritual
+leaders and moral guides.
+
+The third accusation brought against our neighbors is that of political
+undemocracy. Government by revolution is said to be the rule, and an
+election in which the "outs" win a victory over the "ins" is practically
+unknown. Victorious majorities are governed in size only by the discretion
+of the dominant power, and the Latin mind seems a stranger to the
+fundamental principle of accepting a majority decision as binding until
+the next election.
+
+To accept gracefully a majority decision against himself or his party is
+an art slowly acquired by any politician. On the playgrounds we see this
+trait; in amateur clubs and literary societies we find it; in the arena of
+political strife it does its worst and results in a state of affairs in
+which revolution becomes the general substitute for elections.
+
+I stood one day on the campus of a Christian college in a Latin republic.
+The young men were playing baseball, and they were playing it well. I
+discovered that baseball was a regular part of their curriculum, that they
+were required to play so many games per week, and that they received
+credit for the games, provided they were played according to rules. When I
+inquired as to the reason for this I was informed by the efficient
+director of the school that baseball was in his opinion one of the most
+important subjects in the course. "There are two things that we can teach
+through baseball better than any other way. One is team work--a fellow
+can't play the game alone; and the other is the art of accepting defeat
+gracefully. Half of the boys must be defeated every day, which is an
+invaluable drill for them."
+
+[Illustration: THE TOWN PUMP, INTERIOR VILLAGE]
+
+Even as we discussed the matter, a tall fellow got into a dispute with the
+umpire, and after a dramatic flourish swung his arms in the air and
+shouted, "No juego mas" ("I will play no more").
+
+"There--do you hear that?" remarked the director. "That is what we are
+trying to cure."
+
+As far as my observation has gone, nobody except the educational
+missionary is trying very hard to cure this most unfortunate trait in an
+otherwise very fine character.
+
+[Illustration: WAYSIDE CEMETERY IN THE JUNGLE]
+
+Here, again, it is not difficult to trace this stream to its sources. We
+understand much better since 1914 whence came this political peculiarity.
+The ideals of European politics have been transferred across the Atlantic
+and their fruits on foreign soil have not been tempered by the vigor of
+free institutions grown strong in the processes of centuries. If
+Central-American republics are only constitutional monarchies in which the
+monarch governs the constitution, there is very good reason for the
+anomaly. If it is true that there is not a single republic on American
+soil south of "the line," then it is to be said that there never can be
+such a republic until Latin-America ceases to think in terms of European
+history and Jesuitism is broken from its hold on the moral consciousness
+of the men who make and unmake republics in the Latin world. Successful
+republics have been developed in that turbulent but onmoving stream of
+Western and modern ideals that has found its most complete expression in
+the United States, but which has also tinctured the thinking and
+influenced the political processes of practically every country on earth
+except Prussia. We ourselves are not perfect yet, and it behooves us to
+withhold the stones from our neighbors until we can show a clean record.
+We will have some distance to go before democracy is a finished product,
+and it will be a good plan to take the neighbors along with us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+LATIN-AMERICAN HEART
+
+
+Much misunderstanding has been due to faulty methods of approach to our
+southern neighbor. Political diplomacy, commercial competition, and
+military displays will never get to the core of this international apple.
+The Latin-American is a man of heart, and until we recognize this fact we
+shall fail to understand him. Sympathy and courtesy will avail more than
+battleships and boycotts. This man is a born diplomat and has high
+intellectual development, but the deep and dominant motives of his life
+are his friendships and affections.
+
+If we know the ruling motives of men and races, we may avoid nearly all
+the misunderstandings and incriminating accusations that arise when we
+occupy different points of view, but matters look very different when we
+get at them from the viewpoint of the other man.
+
+Seeming contradictions dissolve and weaknesses appear as unsuccessful
+aspirations. Our complaints of low initiative become more reserved when we
+remember that spiritual slavery is a certain antidote for the pioneering
+spirit. The presence of a high though fruitless idealism amid
+insurmountable difficulties attests a virile and buoyant spirit, captive
+and caged. Where toil has been treated with contempt for ages nothing
+short of economic helplessness can follow.
+
+As for financial faithlessness, who shall throw the first stone? If once
+we begin to justify the means by the end, commercial life is going to
+suffer. If we begin to complain about the insecurity of political
+institutions, we need to remember that democracy is one of the first and
+finest fruits of a free mind and heart. And we have not yet ourselves
+arrived sufficiently to do any boasting.
+
+To know our Latin-Americans as personal friends is to attain a new
+viewpoint on the whole Pan-American problem. We may not blind our eyes to
+their defects more than to our own--there are plenty of both; but
+understanding brings explanation of many things, and if we know all and
+understand fully, we may come to a different verdict. The southern man far
+surpasses us in certain traits of which we have taken small account and in
+which we are racially deficient. When given free opportunity, satisfactory
+response appears to the stimuli of democracy and initiative.
+
+To know personally the Spanish-American is to become aware of his keen
+intuitions, his high personal charm, his strong sympathies, his
+constructive imagination, and his hearty idealism; and whatever else he
+may be, he is loyal to his friends and their interests. He may not be so
+intent on doing something, but he has time for social graces and arts, and
+possesses an innate refinement and grace of character that we take pride
+in having neglected.
+
+[Illustration: COCONUTS--SO GOOD AND SO HIGH]
+
+The Latin at his best is the racial goal of South America. Who cares to be
+judged by the social leavings of his own country? The South American best
+is intelligent, refined, and faithful to trusts. His mental processes are
+touched with a constructive imagination that finds high expression in his
+abundant art and literature. With a nervous, artistic, and sensitive
+temperament, he responds quickly to friendly approaches and stands ready
+to do his full share in social obligations.
+
+That peons and ignorantes are not thus described is only to say that the
+tramps and social unacceptables of any country are not to be classed with
+the intellectuals and social leaders.
+
+The personal equation is apt to be decisive in South America. Commercial
+travelers learn this to their profit or loss, as they adopt or disdain the
+ruling motives of the men with whom they deal. It may do very well in some
+cities of the United States for the breezy commercial traveler to display
+his samples, deliver his oration, and give the merchant three minutes to
+take or leave the best goods on earth. Such methods in Spanish countries
+means no business at all. Selling goods in South America is a social
+function in which are involved members of the family and, incidentally,
+some very pleasant hours. Any sort of make-believe is useless. Unless a
+man really likes the people he had better abandon any plans to do business
+with them. He may get on in Chicago, but in Bogota he will be very
+lonesome.
+
+When a man sells goods on talk he may dispose of inferior qualities
+occasionally, and trust that he can talk enough faster next time to make
+up for his loss of standing; but when goods are sold on friendship a
+single mistake in quality means ruptured relations and the end of
+commercial confidence. And where friendship furnishes the basis of
+business the buyer will protect the seller in return for uniform good
+treatment on his part. Like all other racial customs, when once it is
+understood the system is not so unreasonable as at first appears.
+
+An Englishman traveling in South America told me that on one occasion he
+sold a large bill of goods on credit to a man who proved to be a rascal.
+As the time for the return of the salesman and the payment for the goods
+drew near the buyer tried to sell out his entire stock at half price, with
+the intention of leaving the country with the money. But all the other
+merchants were friends of the salesman and refused to take advantage of
+the situation, to the loss of their friend. They preferred to lose their
+own profits.
+
+Business in Latin-America is a personal matter. If a deal goes wrong,
+somebody is responsible. North American business has a large impersonal
+element, and the man who makes a bad bargain usually feels that he had
+himself largely to blame. The joke is on him, and he will exercise more
+shrewdness next time. But the southern merchant views the case
+differently, and it behooves the salesman to handle only goods that will
+move to the profit of the buyer.
+
+When once this basis of friendly confidence is well set up it is easy to
+consummate large transactions with very little preliminary investigation.
+The capitalist is more interested in knowing what his trusted friend
+thinks than in getting data upon which to base his own conclusions.
+
+[Illustration: BOILING "DULCE"--CRUDE SUGAR]
+
+National ambassadors and Christian missionaries soon learn what the
+business man found out long ago: that there is only one road to successful
+relations with these people and that is the way of the heart. Neither
+minister nor missionary nor merchant can succeed unless he genuinely likes
+the people with whom he is dealing. Any missionary who is afflicted with a
+sense of superiority had better look up the sailing dates of any steamer
+line connecting with the United States.
+
+In meeting strangers the right kind of a letter of introduction has high
+value. Let the letter be from a personal friend, and the homes and hearts
+are opened in a way that surprises the more coldly formal man from the
+north. It is a cheering and heartening experience to present a good letter
+to a fine family and be received with a cordiality and genuine hospitality
+that leaves no doubt as to the honest motives of the hosts.
+
+But how are we to find the road to the heart of any people unless we can
+speak to them in their own tongue in which they were born? The interpreter
+does very well for trivial and formal matters, but who wants to use an
+interpreter in his own family? Here is where the "United Stateser" gets
+into trouble. As a linguist he does not shine; in fact, he is barely
+visible in a good light. He considers it beneath him to take the trouble
+to learn anyone's language. Why should he? He can speak English already.
+If anyone has anything to say to him, let him say it in English; and if he
+cannot speak English, then surely he can have nothing worth saying. It is
+a ready formula, but it fails to reach the hearts of men who do not happen
+to have been born in the United States.
+
+The Latin is a better linguist than his neighbor to the north. Nearly all
+the better class people speak some English, though they are very modest
+about the matter. Practically all of them speak two or more languages. But
+even if they do surpass us in speech and can use some English, we are not
+excused from acquiring a working knowledge of the language of the people
+with whom we are to deal. The increasing development of Spanish teaching
+in North American schools is one of the most helpful signs of the times.
+
+Nowhere does the innate courtesy of the Latin-American shine more than in
+his bearing toward the novice who tries to learn his language. We of the
+United States are wont to laugh at the linguistic struggles of the
+stranger within our gates, but not so with the South American. He is a
+gentleman, and will take immense pains to assist anyone who makes an
+effort to talk to him. He seems to regard it as a compliment that anyone
+should try to use his language. Any faltering effort will receive
+immediate encouragement.
+
+A volume could be written about the comical blunders of North American
+tyros in language learning. A hundred or two garbled words, vigorous
+guessing and violent arm action make up the linguistic equipment of some
+would-be "interpreters." Mixed English, Spanish, jerks, and profanity will
+do wonders where there is nothing else, but as substitutes for language
+they are far from ideal. Classic is the story of one of these interpreters
+who struggled in vain to deliver the meaning of his friend to a native,
+and at last gave up in disgust, regretting that he "ever learned the
+blamed language anyway."
+
+Spanish is possibly as easy to learn as any language other than that of
+one's native land. Aside from its complicated verb and annoying gender, it
+has few difficulties that need cause acute distress. But the score of
+"easy methods" without teachers are to be avoided. There is no easy way to
+learn a language. It takes work, hard work, and a lot of it to learn a
+second language. But it can be done, and to acquire a new medium of
+expression, even in middle life, is an experience not to be taken lightly.
+It is above all things interesting. It comes at last to this: the only way
+to speak, write, or read Spanish effectively is to learn it. Short cuts
+bring short results.
+
+And the only road to a worthwhile understanding of the Latin-American is
+that of a sympathetic personal acquaintance and genuine friendship. It is
+a matter of heart more than of head, and unless the North American has a
+heart himself he had better acquire one or abandon his efforts to deal
+with the Latin-American.
+
+To the traveler from the Orient Latin-America is easy to know. There is
+much in Spanish ceremonial, love of life and color and rhythm, the innate
+chivalry and politeness, so often absent from the direct processes of the
+North American, to suggest the peculiar charm of the Orient at its best.
+The ornateness of architecture appears in the East and West in nearly
+equal measure. When it comes to elaborate speeches and flattering
+expressions, not even the honorifics of ceremonial Japan have much
+advantage over the gracious and complimentary extravagances of the
+Spanish-American.
+
+It was at a school entertainment that the director, who spoke excellent
+Spanish, was unavoidably absent, and the writer was pressed into service
+at the last moment to explain some stereopticon views and make a few
+announcements. The language was that of a tyro and must have afforded
+material for much amusement to the cultured parents of the school
+children. But no one laughed, and as a reporter for a Spanish paper
+chanced to be on hand, the morning edition stated that the entertainment
+was a high success and that the views were described in the choicest of
+classic Spanish while the announcements were delivered with a diction of
+the purest and highest type. It was the conventional manner of describing
+any public event.
+
+This temperament leads to oratory as rivers run to the sea. Given a few
+ideas for a start, and any educated Latin will deliver an extempore
+oration that suggests weeks of careful preparation. Rounded periods and
+classic expression mark every polished phrase.
+
+Probably the most perplexing and annoying thing about the North American
+in the eyes of his southern neighbor is our incessant hurry and rush. We
+may be millionaires in money but we are hopelessly bankrupt in time. And
+the South American is both millionaire and philanthropist in time. He
+always has a surplus and is willing to use it--and his friend's too. Some
+of our hurrying about is regarded as a great joke. Clayton Sedgwick Cooper
+quotes a Bengalese of Calcutta as regarding a certain Englishman as "one
+of the uncomfortable works of God." Such are we of the United States in
+the eyes of our southern friends.
+
+The formalities of social life are of vast importance to the Panamanian,
+and they are also important to the North American who wishes to transact
+any sort of business with officials and educated men of any class. Dress
+suits and high hats are not to be despised if one is to get on in the
+capital city. Neither are business and politics to be separated if any
+business is to be done.
+
+During 1918 the death of President Valdez within a month of the
+constitutional date of the national election created a situation in which
+the election board was controlled by one political party and the police
+department by the other, spelling inevitable trouble. Military authorities
+on the Canal Zone took a hand and sent over a troop of cavalry to police
+the city during the election week. At sight of the soldiers panic
+possessed many women and children, who had been told that the Americans,
+if they came, would shoot down all persons on the street without warning.
+A few hours convinced the populace of the error of this widely circulated
+report, and the election passed peacefully, the party in office winning.
+
+Panamanian officials are uniformly courteous, kindly, and will go to any
+reasonable length to grant any proper request, especially if it comes from
+a friend. I have called on various men in high authority many times on
+diverse matters and have never failed to be received cordially and given
+the best of personal treatment. It has occasionally happened, however,
+that after leaving the official I tried to recall just what he had stated
+or agreed to do, and had difficulty in finding anything definite.
+
+[Illustration: WASHING BY THE RIVER]
+
+Perhaps Latin character reaches its highest level in family life. The
+women of the Latin race are noted for natural grace and comeliness, and in
+their own homes they give themselves to their husbands and children with a
+devotion to which some of the club women of northern lands are strangers,
+as well as their families. Motherhood is a high calling before which all
+else must give way. The open life of the northern family, with its easy
+conventions and free hospitality, is largely unknown, but a close and
+intimate family life is built up essentially stronger in some features
+than anything found further north. The Spanish home is a very select and
+secluded affair, into the charmed circle of which only the most intimate
+friends may enter.
+
+This wife and mother usually knows nothing of her husband's affairs, and
+has little freedom of the streets or public places. There is none of that
+comradeship in business interests often found in the States between
+husband and wife.
+
+The senoritas, or young women, of these homes are decidedly feminine. They
+make much of cosmetics, but they do at least spare us the assorted colors
+of the hair dyer's art. And they do not make a holy show of themselves on
+the street, with loud manners and conspicuous costumes, as if to attract
+attention of all passers-by. It must be said that some of the better class
+young women of these countries are "stunning lookers," and are always
+attractive and well bred, but with limited educational advantages they are
+apt to be shallow conversationalists. Many of the men prefer them that
+way. For a woman to know too much about business and politics detracts
+from her distinctly feminine charm in the eyes of these Spanish men. What
+religious devotion exists in these countries is found among the women, who
+usually go regularly to mass and confession.
+
+Strictest chaperonage is maintained over young women, no girl being
+permitted for a moment to be alone with a young man, a system that would
+make slow headway in North America. And the women are long suffering with
+their husbands, from whom they endure conduct that would break up almost
+any North American home.
+
+The Panamanian woman has none of the boldness of the new woman of
+Argentine, nor the ultra-timidity of Peruvian seclusion. She knows the
+value of balconies and lace shawls and effective coiffures, and it must be
+said that in spite of rigorous supervision and never-failing modesty of
+demeanor, she has a charm and a "come-hither" in her eye that has won the
+heart of many a North American.
+
+The possibilities of the Latin race are perhaps best measured by the
+occasional rare characters that break through the bonds of convention and
+precedent and attain an altitude of gracious nobility unsurpassed anywhere
+on earth. Occasional products of missionary schools show results in
+character and efficiency that indicate clearly the latent capacity for a
+something in which the brusque Saxon is too often deficient.
+
+The "Christ of the Andes" was set up on the boundary line between
+Argentine and Chile as a suggestion of the only basis of permanent peace
+in the life and teachings of the Prince of Peace. This famous statue was
+the result of the work of a woman, the Senora de Costa, president of the
+Christian Mothers' League of Buenos Ayres. Cast of old Spanish cannon, and
+installed in its lofty elevation of thirteen thousand feet in the Andes,
+the monument was dedicated March 13, 1914, as much a memorial to the work
+of a Latin-American woman as a testimonial to the peaceful intentions of
+the two nations.
+
+There is a Spanish word, not exactly translatable into English, which may
+be taken as the key to Latin character at its best. It is the word
+"simpatico," which means something more than "sympathetic." A man is
+_simpatico_ when he is gracious and open-hearted and likable and
+considerate of other folks' feelings. There ought to be a course in
+_simpatico_ for every prospective missionary and business man in the
+United States who has any intention of dealing with the Latin-American.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE CARIBBEAN WORLD
+
+
+Readers of Robinson Crusoe associate the Caribbean Sea with piracy and
+rum, but usually have few other ideas on the subject. Most people of the
+United States have scarcely so much as heard that there be any Caribbean
+world except that it is somewhere in the tropics.
+
+To be sure, the Caribbean Sea has a way of impressing itself upon those
+who sail its troubled tides. Perhaps the shades of the villains who used
+to cross these waters on their murderous expeditions still linger to raise
+the adverse winds and toss the seasick passenger in his misery. Certain it
+is that very few travelers have any affection for the seven hundred miles
+of salt water between the Mosquito Coast and the islands so notorious in
+the sixteenth century.
+
+It is with something of surprise, then, that the prowler about Panama
+learns of a homogeneous population living on the chain of islands that
+begins below Porto Rico and swings downward in a graceful curve to the tip
+of the South American coast. These Lesser Antilles mark the eastern
+boundaries of the famous, or _in_famous, Caribbean Sea. Though small in
+size, their considerable numbers and large populations make them
+important. If they are not so well known now, at least they have the
+distinction of having been discovered by Columbus when he set out to find
+a way to the East Indies and discovered the West Indies instead.
+
+[Illustration: COSTA RICA FARM HOME]
+
+The political complexion of these islands varies greatly. Government is
+shared by Spain, France, England, and the United States, and the languages
+spoken conform to the governing power. The purchase of the Danish West
+Indies has given the United States a permanent and prominent influence in
+the group.
+
+No account of matters Panamanian could omit reference to the people of
+this West Indian world. From the beginning of Panama's history Caribbean
+adventurers have crossed the sea in any craft that would float, and have
+played a large part in the restless events of the Isthmus. West Indian
+influence and blood were mingled with the history of the Isthmus for four
+hundred years, and in these last days it has been the West Indian who
+furnished the labor that dug the Panama Canal, and who still contributes
+the brawn and perspiration for the work of the Canal Zone. Twenty-five
+thousand of these people live on or near the Zone and are employed by its
+government, and probably as many more live near by and mingle with the
+native life of Panama. All through the interior there are always some West
+Indians.
+
+Without the West Indian the digging of the Canal would not have been
+impossible, but would have been much more difficult. Chinese coolies would
+have cost more to import and could hardly have worked for less money.
+Considering the cost of living on the Canal Zone, the West Indian has
+furnished some of the cheapest labor in the world. In construction days
+the nine or ten cents an hour wage was more than the black man had
+received at home, but his living expenses on the Zone were very much
+higher than on the Caribbean Islands. The wage scale of the West Indian on
+the Canal Zone has been revised and increased several times by the
+American government in an effort to keep pace with the rising cost of
+living; but it must be said that the laborer's wage of about thirty
+dollars a month, with from three dollars to six dollars deducted for the
+rent of two rooms, does not afford a very sumptuous living for a man and
+his family. The "silver" man on the Zone pays the same price for his food
+and clothes as does the "gold" white man who receives twenty-five per cent
+higher wages than is paid for the same work in the States, and in addition
+has a furnished apartment or cottage free of rent cost. The men on the
+"gold" rate complain of the high cost of living. What they would do if
+reduced to one sixth of their present wages they do not stop to consider.
+It is not a pleasant subject to face, but it is hoped that the wages of
+the West Indian may be lifted to the point where he can at least buy food
+enough to keep him in good physical condition.
+
+The West Indies furnishes the plantation labor of Panama and Costa Rica,
+without which there would be little plantation work done. In the hot and
+humid banana groves he endures the temperature and handles the huge banana
+bunches as though born for the job, as perhaps he is. Out from Almirante
+and Puerto Limon range the tracks of the plantation railroads through
+hundreds of miles of banana forests, where the black man supplies the
+labor for the largest farms in the world. Forty or fifty thousand of these
+people live on and about the plantations of the Atlantic coast and without
+them the largest agricultural enterprise ever carried on under one
+management would collapse.
+
+The West Indian on the Isthmus is not the West Indian at home. He may live
+and die on the mainland, but he thinks in terms of the islands from which
+he came. Like the American Negro, he is of African descent, but his
+African origin is so remote that no trace of it remains in his
+consciousness, though it is evident in his psychology. Most of the West
+Indians about the Canal Zone dream of returning to the islands again.
+
+These people of the Caribbean world have a decided race consciousness, and
+in their thinking and living are a world unto themselves. Separate and
+distinct from the Greater Antilles and the mainland, they know very little
+of the continental life and customs, and any attempt to classify them with
+American Negroes or Europeans raises a set of social problems difficult to
+solve.
+
+[Illustration: BANANAS THIRTY FEET HIGH]
+
+To the North American the mental processes of the West Indian are a
+psychological jungle in which the explorer is soon lost. Perhaps no one
+has yet essayed to really understand this man, and those who have tried to
+analyze him maintain that he does not understand himself. Certain it is
+that he does not trouble himself with any self-analysis. He has enough
+other things to occupy his attention. With the psychological background of
+his remote African ancestors, his race characteristics have changed very
+little since the days when his forefathers were forcibly torn from their
+native land and deported into savage slavery.
+
+[Illustration: SAN BLAS INDIANS HAVE "POKER FACES"]
+
+The social sanctions of the West Indian are rigid and well established.
+The list of forbidden things is long and complex, and of signs, and dreams
+and portents, strange and powerful, there seems no end. Numerous negatives
+appear in his social and personal creed, and he who violates these
+prohibitions must be a courageous soul. To introduce any original, new
+idea into this scheme of things is a difficult task, and is apt to arouse
+a whole chain of reactions, complex and mysterious. This man will follow
+literally any able leadership, but the leader must go in the direction of
+the established currents of opinion or he will have a hard time of it.
+
+The West Indian has a religious capacity that impresses the visitor as a
+remarkable aptitude for things sacred. Such, indeed, it is. And the
+religious life of the earnest and conscientious members of this race
+exhibits a fine type of devotion and sacrifice. As might be expected,
+there is free expression of emotional experience, but on the whole those
+who are truly religious match their songs by their deeds and their
+testimonies by their lives. Practically nothing is known on the Isthmus of
+anything bordering on hysteria. When it comes to familiarity with the
+English Bible the average church member will put to shame his white
+friend, and in interpretation of scripture some very unique and
+interesting efforts are produced.
+
+In matters of doctrine most of these people are rigid immersionists. The
+women invariably wear their hats in church, on the ground that Saint Paul
+commanded such observance, but they ignore the exhortation of the same
+apostle that the women keep silence in the churches. All special occasions
+possess thrilling interest, and almost any West Indian will go hungry to
+get good clothes. How they manage to dress as well as they do on the
+incomes they receive is a mystery that has not yet been solved.
+
+An experienced missionary among these people says that practically every
+West Indian at some time in his life is a member of some church. If this
+is true, many of the West Indians in Panama are backsliders, as a majority
+are not at present showing any interest in Christian observances or moral
+living. Possibly many of those who are genuinely devout and consistently
+Christian establish a membership in several different churches, one after
+the other. Tiring of one church, discontented with the pastor, or
+encountering personal difficulties with other members, it is easy and
+convenient to join some other congregation, and of split-ups and
+break-offs there seems no end. Nearly every church on the Isthmus has had
+its deflections and divisions, and anything like the modern movement
+toward unity and cooperation of the Christian program is a _terra
+incognita_ to this enthusiastic individualist.
+
+A surprising thing is the capacity for financial self-sacrifice of the
+West Indian. Out of the pennies that he receives as wages he contributes
+liberally to the support of his church and for the education of his
+children. Nearly all West Indian churches on and near the Canal Zone are
+self-supporting, and nearly all West Indian schools are maintained from
+tuition fees. If these people were to receive good wages, they would not
+only wear good clothes but would contribute to community enterprises and
+keep their children in school as long as possible. That the more dissolute
+members of the community would spend their money for rum is no reason for
+depriving the laborer of his hire.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE STYLES MOLEST NO MORE]
+
+Living without adequate means of recreation or possibilities of culture or
+wide information, life is nevertheless saved from deadly monotony by the
+exercise of the high gifts of controversy. When it comes to a straight,
+head-on wrangle the West Indian shines in a glory all his own. Not even a
+loquacious Oriental can surpass his powers of abuse and lordly contempt
+for his adversary. If words were bullets, the whole population would
+perish in twenty-four hours, innocent and guilty together. To the
+uninitiated bystander it seems that an empire is being lost, but the
+old-timers cease to heed the quarreling and go their way indifferent to
+the social safety valve of these greatest natural controversialists of the
+tropic world. A young woman on the train in Costa Rica left her seat to
+speak to a friend and another girl slipped in next to the window. When the
+visitor returned the program began. Back and forth flew claims, charges
+and counter-charges as to the ownership of the seat. With indescribable
+scorn the usurper said, "Do you want a seat in my lap?" which provoked
+"Ah, now I see how you was raised."
+
+"Indeed, and you have no manners at all, it is plain to be seen."
+
+Back and forth the duel rages until the first claimant sought another
+seat, saying, "I certainly does respect myself too highly to sit by the
+likes of you."
+
+The combat closed thus: "When I look upon you I know what you is, for I
+can read your face."
+
+All of which falls flat without the wholly inimitable accent of the
+Jamaican dialect.
+
+This accent of the British subject in the West Indies is a dialect so
+peculiar that it defies the most skillful impersonators. Somehow only
+those to the manner born seem able to acquire or imitate the strong
+combination of London cockney and African rhythm. The more intelligent and
+better-educated people speak intelligibly, but it is common to hear
+alleged English that is almost impossible to understand. There is not the
+slightest resemblance to the traditional dialect of the Southern Negro,
+and as for expressing it in cold type there is no alphabet on earth that
+can represent the sounds and inflections produced.
+
+The West Indian in Panama has a certain economic efficiency on the level
+to which he has been trained, otherwise he would not have been brought to
+the Zone by tens of thousands and retained there through the years of
+Canal construction on into the present period of operation and
+maintenance. Under a boss this man is faithful and efficient, provided the
+task assigned him is within the scope of his training and ability. And
+however slow or inaccurate he may be, he can hardly help earning the wages
+that he receives. And if he did not work at all, the patience with which
+he endures the frequent abuse and cursings of the impatient gang bosses
+ought to be worth something. Certainly, the reader of this would not take
+what is handed out to the West Indian for ten times his wages. It is true
+that he is not strong on independent judgment, and that when left to his
+own counsel he may do some strange things and perhaps very little of
+anything. But how is a man to develop judgment who has never borne
+responsibility?
+
+Deep down in the heart of this man is slowly rising a resentment against
+the economic conditions he finds on the Zone, and in many cases silent and
+dangerous hate is gradually filling the hearts of the unorganized and
+helpless "silver" men. Unless conditions are improved the time may come
+when this resentment may flare up in a useless and hopeless protest. But
+it is more likely that the wage scale will be readjusted from time to time
+and the explosion forestalled. Occasionally some of these people get away
+to the United States, but none of them ever return. For them the
+patriarchal Canal Zone offers no attractions compared with the free
+competition of the States. It is maintained by officials of the Zone that
+the wage scale is as high as available funds will warrant; that if the
+West Indian had any more money, it would do him no good, and that the
+increases in wages already granted have fully kept pace with the rise in
+the cost of living.
+
+In matters of personal morals the West Indian is accused of loose
+matrimonial practices. A priest said to me one day that if two
+commandments--the seventh and eighth--could be omitted from the Ten, the
+West Indian would get along all right. This slander is not deserved; but
+investigation into facts reveals that the morals of the West Indians are
+but little better than those of Panama. Concubinage is widely practiced,
+with a system of financial support; but no more so than everywhere else in
+the tropics except on the Canal Zone, where moral conditions are
+exceptionally good. The remark of the priest may have been due to the fact
+that most of the West Indians are Protestants.
+
+Some characteristics of rare merit and interest occasionally arise among
+these people. They do not sing as well as their northern cousins, but they
+produce orators of no mean ability. Earnest, consistent, faithful,
+affectionate, and original in expression, the best of these people afford
+promise of what may be expected when better conditions bring large
+opportunity.
+
+[Illustration: CHINESE ALWAYS START A SCHOOL]
+
+[Illustration: "SCHOOLDAYS"]
+
+Like other races not long exposed to civilization, the children of these
+people show surprising precocity. They give excellent account of
+themselves in primary schools, and in performances at public
+entertainments they are letter-perfect. Fifty numbers on a program and
+never a slip or a failure throughout, and not a complaint or criticism
+except that it was a little short. One large church established a record
+by producing a Christmas program containing one hundred and eight numbers.
+Through the primary years these youngsters sometimes surpass their white
+friends, but the economic pressure of living conditions crowds them nearly
+all out of school at the end of the fourth or fifth grade. Once they get a
+groundwork in the three "Rs" they are considered well educated for life.
+
+As may be expected, the birth rate is high, but large families are rare
+because of the distressing and unnecessary high rate of infant mortality.
+How could it be otherwise when a whole family lives in one room on
+twenty-five dollars a month with food at New York prices?
+
+That the Jamaicans are a gregarious folk is to be expected. The social
+instinct is always strong in any people of African descent. Canal Zone
+bosses complain that their employees prefer to leave the clean and
+sanitary quarters of the Zone and live in the Guachapali and San Miguel
+districts of Panama and in Colon, where they are crowded together in a way
+that would prove fatal to a white man. The constant company and crowded
+conditions do not trouble the West Indians, whereas the rigid restrictions
+of the silver quarters of the Zone he often finds objectionable.
+
+What the West Indian most needs is a fair chance. He is cursed and
+disparaged on every hand. He is to blame for being ragged and unwashed,
+but when he goes hungry and dresses up, then he is a hopeless spendthrift
+and a fraudulent dude. It is useless to pay him fair wages because he
+would spend the money. Unscrupulous landlords are allowed to extort
+enormous rents for wretched quarters in Panama and Colon, because, if the
+Jamaican did not spend his money that way, he would pay it out for
+something else. He is looked down upon as not being highly educated, and
+it is claimed that the more he knows the worse off he is. No matter what
+happens he is to blame. If the cholera should appear in Panama, or the
+Gold Hill should slide into the Canal, the West Indian would be the guilty
+party. Surely, he is worth his wages merely as a target for the verbal
+explosions of his boss. Some men would have difficulty in holding their
+jobs were it not for the timely assistance of this "goat" of the Zone.
+Living conditions in Caledonia and Guachapali would give the New York East
+Side something to think about. Rooms ten or twelve feet square are rented
+out to families who usually stretch a curtain across the middle, sleep
+huddled together in the rear at night, and live in the front of the "flat"
+the rest of the time. From some primitive prejudice comes a violent
+dislike of fresh air, especially at night, when every room is as nearly as
+possible hermetically sealed. In a tropical temperature no one has yet
+explained how the inmates live till morning.
+
+Naked children swarm in the streets. At first the visitor is properly
+shocked, but soon ceases to notice these ebony cherubs. In time, however,
+one does get tired of it. Along the sidewalks and in the doorsteps the
+evening hours are turned into neighborhood debating societies and
+wrangling clubs, and between the arguments and disputes, and the always
+nearby street meeting, there is never a dull moment. That is why they
+prefer living there to the quiet and monotonous life in the silver town on
+the Zone.
+
+Religious gatherings on the street are a marked feature of the night life
+of this part of the city. Torchlights and crowds, vigorous singing and
+enthusiastic exhortations mark the visible features of the efforts of
+these earnest persuaders of their neighbors to flee from the wrath to
+come. If street demonstrations were confined to religious meetings, all
+might be well. While ever-present canteenas dispense cheap and deadly rum
+there will always be people who will go hungry and ragged to buy
+"firewater," and with one or two drinks aboard the West Indian becomes a
+very talkative and quarrelsome person. Often have I seen sidewalks
+spattered with blood, and a common sight is that of a couple of policemen
+leading away a gory victim or culprit.
+
+So scanty is the food ration of these people that the general custom
+prevails of eating very little during the day and then making a feast at
+night of whatever food can be secured. The Methodist missionary school in
+this district established a soup line at noon for the feeding of hungry
+babies who came to the school without their breakfast and had nothing at
+home to eat at noon. Any sort of "learning" under such circumstances was
+impossible.
+
+Three or four things must be supplied if the West Indian is to rise above
+his present level. He needs living wages, he needs intelligent and
+responsible leadership; he needs a better education, and he needs a
+broader social basis and a wider horizon for his circle of life.
+
+There are a few lawyers and doctors and teachers of this race, and there
+are a number of preachers, who consider themselves to be the
+intellectuals, but there is no concert of purpose or plan for progress
+among these people. Each man is intent upon exalting his own personal
+prominence, or furthering the interests of the little group to which he
+belongs. West Indian life at present is segregated into little cliques and
+rings, represented by churches, lodges, dancing clubs, and other
+organizations. So far no common cause has united any of these factors in
+any program of progress. So intent are they upon individual emphasis that
+any thought of the social whole seems almost impossible. Several efforts
+have been made to unite in a common program of service the different
+churches in a given community, but so far small success has attended these
+worthy plans.
+
+Perhaps more than almost anything else the West Indian needs racial
+self-respect. He is humble enough before his boss, and if well treated is
+loyal and faithful; but for his own kind he has little appreciation. "I
+will never work for my own color," boasted a proud cook one day. And one
+of the most difficult problems of the missionary grows out of the fact
+that the West Indians generally despise each other. To arouse leadership
+and stimulate ambition among a people who look down upon themselves is a
+big task. The individual man will have to get his mind on something
+besides his effort to exalt himself above all his fellows before any great
+progress can be made. The fundamental trouble with the West Indian is that
+he looks up to those whom he considers his superiors and looks down upon
+everybody else. It seems difficult for him to look across or on a level,
+and recognize other people as being on the same plane with himself.
+
+The educational equipment of these people needs to be extended beyond the
+present mere elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some
+intellectual window into the great world out beyond the Caribbean Sea must
+be provided if there is to be deliverance from the superstition and
+iron-bound customs that have held them fast for ten thousand years.
+
+What the West Indian needs is not more vigorous swaying of congregations
+nor more loudly shouting enthusiasts, but a program of Christian living
+that will enlarge the boundaries of life and push back the horizons of
+interest. Debating societies, reading courses, study clubs, extension
+lectures, night schools, vocational training, good moving picture
+programs--all of these will do much to break the spell of the past and
+introduce new ideas where they will take root and bear harvest. Here is a
+fertile field for a Christian settlement, but the settlement worker should
+be a resident of the community. One difficulty with the mission work now
+conducted is that it is done from the top down, and from the outside in.
+Any attempt toward higher education will need some endowment. It is a
+tragedy that these people, out of their wretched poverty, are compelled to
+pay tuition fees for the meager education that their children receive.
+Some of the plans now being formulated for a broader work in these
+communities deserve every encouragement and support.
+
+It is greatly to the credit of the West Indian that he nearly always
+manages in some way to send his children to school, cost what it may.
+Considering his opportunities, he does well. If the American people were
+suddenly asked to pay one or two dollars a month for each child sent to
+school, there would be educational revolution.
+
+It is the intention of the Canal Zone government to house its employees on
+the Zone as soon as quarters can be provided, but this will require some
+time. As all "silver" employees are charged a monthly rent for these
+quarters, the project is a business matter for the Zone. Twelve families
+are usually quartered in one two-story house, two rooms and a porch
+section to the family, with two wash rooms and sanitary quarters for the
+whole house. At five dollars per month rent for each family, the house
+yields an income of eight hundred and forty dollars per year. In a
+building of about the same size four white families would be quartered
+rent free.
+
+[Illustration: THREE IN A ROW]
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER, HOME, AND--THE SIMPLE LIFE]
+
+There is abundant opportunity in the Republic of Panama for the
+organization of agricultural colonization schemes. Good land is plentiful.
+Families could be placed on the land without much housing expense, and if
+food could be supplied them for a few months, self-support would soon be
+established. Some philanthropist might render valuable service and open up
+new opportunities for a large number of these people by placing them out
+on the land where each family could have its own house and where better
+conditions prevail. A colony of one thousand souls grouped about a central
+church and school and store would afford new hope and better living to
+these dwellers in the crowded tenements.
+
+What may be the future of the West Indian on the Isthmus is not yet
+clearly established, and the Canal Zone authorities have heretofore
+regarded the "silver" men as more of a temporary necessity than permanent
+residents. As industrial conditions on the Zone become more stable,
+however, it appears that there always will be needed a large labor force
+with a minimum of about twenty thousand people; and unless some new factor
+appears or is imported, the West Indian is going to supply this labor
+demand for years to come. This being the case, the laborer is worthy of
+his hire and should be paid a fair wage for what he does. And the
+missionaries and social workers who are interested in the welfare of these
+people need a coordinated and unified program of religious and educational
+advance. So long as the present disjointed and unconnected methods are
+followed, scattering and sometimes inharmonious results will appear.
+
+So long as there is work for a laborer in Panama, so long the Caribbean
+man will be found here in such numbers as may be needed, and so long as he
+is here he at least deserves good treatment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE PANAMA CANAL
+
+
+Probably most pilgrims to Panama think of the Canal as the outstanding
+feature of the American tropics, and in one way such it is. The traveler
+will probably want to see the Canal first, and he will find it well worthy
+of preferential position.
+
+The story of construction days and engineering problems has been ably told
+elsewhere and does not belong here. Every intelligent traveler will secure
+some good account of the work and read it as something that every man
+should know. It is the romance de luxe of engineering achievement. The
+author of the Arabian Nights Tales would have dug the Canal by the sweep
+of a wand, or the rubbing of an old lamp, but the American method is
+vastly more interesting and is much more likely to remain in working
+order. Aladdin's engineering feats had a way of failing to stay put, if
+the wrong man got hold of the lamp, but the present Canal shows no signs
+of disappearing overnight.
+
+Before war conditions put a wall around everything, seeing the Canal was
+one of the pleasantest and easiest of touring tasks. All was in plain
+view, or could readily be found by asking, and most of the men on duty
+thought it a pleasure to answer questions. Of camera fiends and sketchers
+and notebook makers there were aplenty. But the war stopped all that for a
+time. Anybody could look at the Canal from almost any point along its
+survey, but the locks and docks were strictly private affairs. There are
+statistics in abundance to be had for the asking concerning the Big Ditch.
+Experts take pleasure in supplying us with entertainment by compiling and
+translating figures into interesting statements. For instance, enough
+excavating was done on the Canal to dig a tunnel fourteen feet in diameter
+through the center of the earth, eight thousand miles of boring. It takes
+a little time to comprehend the meaning of a tunnel from Valparaiso,
+Chile, to Peking, China, or straight through from the north pole to the
+southern tip of the world.
+
+Enough concrete was used to build a wall four feet thick and twenty-five
+feet high clear around the State of Delaware. Probably by walking the two
+hundred and sixty-six miles represented by this wall, one might understand
+the amount of concrete involved in the Canal construction.
+
+The enormous size of the locks can only be understood by walking their
+length through the underground tunnels and passageways in which is located
+the marvelous machinery of their operation. To stand on the floor of a dry
+lock and look up at a lock gate eighty feet high, seven feet thick and
+sixty-five feet wide is an impressive experience, but to see a pair of
+such gates swing open and shut at the touch of the finger is something to
+be remembered. The emergency dams look like a steel girder bridge, which,
+indeed, they are, and provide against accidents by as ingenious a piece of
+mechanism as the entire system affords. Enormous iron chains with
+hydraulic springs are stretched across the entrance to the locks to stop
+any reckless ship which might otherwise strike the gates. The Gatun Dam
+alone may be classed as one of the world's greatest achievements.
+
+The builders of the Canal may be pardoned for taking pride in the fact
+that the entire construction cost, down to the present day--three years
+after the opening of the Canal--is still within the original estimate of
+$375,000,000, which figure included the $40,000,000 paid to the French for
+the work of the earlier construction. This means that the cost of the
+Canal was a little less than four dollars apiece for every inhabitant of
+the United States. The national prestige alone gained by the successful
+completion of the work has repaid this four-dollar investment many times
+over. Before the European war $400,000,000 seemed like a good deal of
+money. To-day we think of it as a very small sum.
+
+It is easy to find numerous compilations of figures which astonish and
+perplex us, even though they do help us to understand the magnitude of the
+work. And nothing is more disappointing than to try to understand the
+Canal by looking at it from any point along the bank. You can't see the
+Canal for the water! It is no different from a great Western irrigating
+ditch and looks like any quiet river. There are no marks of effort or
+strain anywhere, and when one looks about on the verdant and peaceful
+landscape he half believes that the tales of the stirring times back in
+construction days must have been dreams.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTRUCTION DAYS IN CULEBRA-GAILARD CUT]
+
+Culebra Cut looks like the Hudson palisades, and Gatun Lake is like any
+other beautiful inland sea in a rolling country. The famous Gatun Dam is
+merely a dyke at the end of the lake and the marvelous spillway is only a
+picturesque waterfall in the middle of a dam. As for the locks, they are
+big concrete chambers looking very much like a paved street on top and
+revealing nothing of the complicated mechanism below; and the germ-proof
+towns are like any other spotlessly clean villages with screened houses,
+and show nothing to cause us astonishment.
+
+Any superficial view of the Canal is disappointing. It is like trying to
+understand a deep mine by looking at the mouth of the shaft. The channel
+is full of water, the machinery is out of sight, the great achievements of
+sanitation have been largely removals of materials, microbes, and
+conditions that have left no trace behind to tell their tale. In one way
+it is a negative result.
+
+The idea of the Canal across the Isthmus is nearly as old as the discovery
+of the Isthmus by white men, but it remained for the intrepid builder of
+the Suez Canal to really undertake in earnest the project of a waterway
+between the two oceans. DeLesseps was both engineer and promoter and never
+really understood the size of his project. He had succeeded at Suez, but
+that was a farmer's ditch beside the Culebra Cut and the Gatun Dam, and
+the famous engineer was a very old man when he began on the Panama
+project. The high prestige of his name brought him money on a stock
+investment basis, and when unprincipled schemers got control of the
+company the crash and scandal were immense. DeLesseps himself became
+insane as the result of the worry and disgrace and died in a hospital.
+
+The French attempt began on January 1, 1880, with a great deal of oratory
+and champagne, also the official blessing of the Bishop of Panama, which
+seems to have been something of a Jonah on the enterprise.
+
+In striking contrast was the beginning of the American work when a few men
+climbed out of a boat into water waist-deep and began cutting down jungle
+brush.
+
+The actual construction and excavation work begun on the Isthmus by the
+French was of a very high order, and much of it was used by the Americans.
+The two causes which defeated the French were reckless financing at home
+and tropical diseases on the Isthmus. So bad did the disease conditions
+become that in the fall months of 1884 fifty-five thousand people died,
+and in the single month of September, 1885, the total rate reached the
+high-water mark of one hundred and seventy-seven per thousand of
+population. The total of lives lost on the enterprise will never be known,
+but is far greater than that of many wars which have received a
+conspicuous notice on the historical page. The collapse of the DeLesseps
+undertaking was followed by the organization of the New Canal Company,
+upon which followed a chapter of bargainings and treaties and negotiations
+and bickerings with the object of selling out the rights and holdings of
+the company to the highest bidder. In all of these the Panama Railroad
+figured very largely, and the Republic of Colombia kept a watchful eye on
+the main chance for herself.
+
+The story of President Roosevelt's large part in the American undertaking
+of the independence of Panama and the organization of the American effort
+is one of the romances of American history. On November 18, 1903,
+Washington recognized the new Republic of Panama, and later paid
+$10,000,000 for the Canal Zone and entered into a treaty guaranteeing the
+peace and perpetuity of the Isthmian Republic. Thus ended a half-century
+of riot and revolution and rebellion which was stated to have included
+fifty-three revolutions in fifty-seven years. Relations between the early
+officials on the Canal Zone and the rulers of Panama were not ideal; some
+of the Americans seemed to have had a real genius for offending the finer
+sensibilities of the natives.
+
+The beginning of the American attempt is not a chapter of which anybody is
+very proud. The effort to dig the Canal from Washington under a mass of
+red tape which tied the hands of the men on the Isthmus proved an
+impossible undertaking. The President succeeded in effecting a
+reorganization which helped some, but not until all red tape was cut and
+Army engineers were put in charge, was anything like real efficiency
+obtained. Three great engineers were connected with the work--Wallace,
+Stevens, and Goethals--and to each of these belongs credit for the very
+high order of work done. While the man who finished the job bears the
+outstanding name in connection with the Canal, without exception the
+engineers who worked under the first two men speak in the highest terms of
+the work that they accomplished.
+
+No snapshot resume of the building days, nor tourist instantaneous
+exposure of visits can reveal, nor appreciate, the big problems that
+confronted the engineers. It all looks easy enough now, but it was very
+different then.
+
+Good health on the Canal Zone seems a very simple matter now, and such it
+is; but when the doctors and sanitary engineers began work it was an
+exceedingly serious situation that they undertook to cure, and without
+their work there could be no Canal to-day. The complete elimination of the
+last case of yellow fever has made entirely harmless the mosquito carriers
+where they occasionally appear on the Isthmus. The best test of the work
+of the Sanitary Department is the fact that the Zone and terminal cities
+have remained clean and that there is no indication of relapse. Before
+work could begin, a whole system of transportation had to be organized, a
+steamer line put into operation, and an immense purchasing department
+gotten into working order. Before men could be brought to the Isthmus to
+do the work some provision had to be made for housing and feeding, and the
+question of materials, supplies, food, fuel, recreation, and education was
+no small matter.
+
+To dig the Canal required not only engineers and officials, but an army of
+common laborers, and the labor question was not easy. The Panamanian might
+have dug the Canal, but he did not do it; he did not want to do it, and
+the probability is that he never could have done it. Employers on the Zone
+refused to hire Panamanians for Canal work.
+
+Chinese coolies might have been imported from Canton or Amoy, but Panama
+is a long way from southern China and still further from India, and no
+intelligent man ever seriously proposed importing Hindus. If enough
+Panamanian Indians could have been found, they might have done the work,
+but the native Indian is a very uncertain and fragmentary factor of life
+on the Isthmus.
+
+At this juncture the West Indian filled the breach and supplied the labor
+for the job. Up to forty-five thousand of them were employed at one time,
+and with the ebb and flow of the human tide between the Isthmus and the
+Caribbean Islands several times that number came to the Isthmus. Somebody
+else _might_ have supplied the labor, but the fact is West Indian _did_ do
+the work, and at least deserves proper recognition therefor.
+
+The problems of suitable construction machinery were in a way simple.
+Given a definite task, it remained to devise mechanical means to meet the
+conditions. In practice, however, the case was not so simple as this
+sounds, and some very difficult knots were untangled before the work was
+well under way. Some of the old French machinery was used clear through
+the construction period, but the jungle was sown with scrap iron of the
+old French equipment that has only recently been removed.
+
+The electrical and mechanical equipment for the operation of the locks is
+a marvel of adaptation and invention and nothing short of a technical
+description can do the subject justice. To see the locks in operation is
+to wonder at the mechanical contrivances which seem almost intelligent,
+and some of the design work is the result of real genius.
+
+Of engineering problems, proper, it is better to let the engineer speak
+with intelligence, but any layman can stand on Gold Hill and by vigorous
+use of the imagination see something of the tremendous work that has been
+done since the first shovelful of earth was turned on that New Year's Day
+in 1880. Whether the French engineers anticipated landslides at Culebra is
+not clear, but the American engineers knew from the start that the porous
+soil would cave in more or less at that point. What it actually did do
+surpassed the expectations of those who surveyed the work. When the banks
+began to cave north of Gold Hill the surrounding country got the idea and
+followed suit so fast that it looked as though the ten-mile strip would
+all be needed.
+
+[Illustration: GATUN SPILLWAY, KEY TO THE CANAL]
+
+I spent a day in the big cut in January, 1917, and noted the rapid crumble
+of the historic bank at this troubled point. The following night the
+channel filled up for a length of eight hundred feet and shipping was
+suspended. Then the dredgers went at it hammer and tongs, and in three
+days and nights they had cleared a channel through that enormous mass of
+material and on the fourth day ships were again passing in safety. It was
+a fine illustration of the way dirt was made to fly in the old days.
+
+Some otherwise intelligent people have utterly failed to comprehend the
+size of the task involved in the mere digging of the Canal. One high
+official advocated the cure of slides by digging back a mile on each side
+of the bank. Verily, he knew not what he said, and a member of Congress on
+visiting the Canal reported that he was still in favor of a sea-level
+route. Competent engineers assured him that to construct a sea-level canal
+from ocean to ocean would require at least fifty years of continuous
+labor. The wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt's ideas has been forever
+vindicated by experience. Some practical man has said that no man can know
+how great is the task of making the earth until he tries to move a little
+of it. The congressman needed a little pick-and-shovel experience.
+
+Administrative problems are not especially acute on the Zone, but the
+completed task gives room for a world of appreciation of the general
+efficiency with which the whole work was carried out, and the
+smooth-running machinery of the executive to-day attests the thoroughness
+with which the departmental system was organized and initiated by the men
+whose names will always be associated with the work. The task of operating
+the Canal to-day would not be very great, nor would it require a very
+large army of employees, but without any preconceived plan various related
+industries to the number of six or seven have grown up about the Canal
+administration and operation, and the Canal Zone government to-day is
+doing a number of things never contemplated in the original plans. The
+routing of ships is directly connected with the coal supply, and a great
+coaling plant stands at Cristobal. A large cold storage plant makes
+possible the supplying of refrigerated goods to shipping countries. While
+the trans-shipping business at Colon is yet in its infancy, the docks
+there are already a very considerable factor in Canal activities.
+Sanitation and public health, of course, require a trained force of
+specialists. The Canal employees must eat, and the commissary hotel and
+restaurant are a very important branch of the service. The quartermaster
+looks after the housing problem, and where there are five thousand
+Americans, most of them living with families, the educational problem
+necessitates a department by itself. The Balboa Docks employ hundreds of
+men at high wages.
+
+In connection with the food problem come the large farming operations
+conducted on the Canal Zone. An army of laborers is employed, and the
+proceeds of the plantations and poultry yards is sold through the
+commissary's stores.
+
+From the beginning much attention has been paid to the social life and
+recreation needs of these exiles from home. A chain of government
+clubhouses runs across the Isthmus, one in each town, where reading rooms,
+games, gymnasiums, refreshment counters, discussion clubs, concerts,
+dances, cigar stores, and motion-picture programs are provided for young
+and old. During the dry season baseball is widely indulged in and plays an
+important part in the social and recreational life of the Zone.
+
+[Illustration: CRISTOBAL STREETS]
+
+Next to the "spotless town" features of the Zone the visitor is impressed
+by the smooth-running system through which everything is done. There may
+be officials who are grouchy and will not take time to answer questions,
+but I have never met one. The routine of operation and maintenance has
+succeeded the drive of construction days when Governor Goethals
+established the famous open house on Sunday morning and received anybody
+who had anything to say to him. The last black laborer could see the
+governor if he wished, and many of them did so. The public-be-hanged
+attitude of occasional small executives in the States is delightfully
+absent. The machinery of administration outwardly works as smoothly as do
+the great gates of the locks. On the inner circle there are, of course,
+problems and sometimes personalities, but they rarely escape from the
+closets where ghosts are supposed to remain.
+
+[Illustration: FAT CATTLE OF COCLE]
+
+When the visitor begins to look about and beyond the Canal he becomes
+aware of the conquered wilderness. Where once was dense and impassable
+jungle now sweep smooth and verdant hills. One-time fever swamps are now
+drained meadows, and the never-failing drip from the sanitary oil barrel
+induces a very high mortality among the mosquitoes. Broad acres of rich
+jungle lands have been cleared and are now model farms. Over the
+grassgrown hills wander thousands of fat cattle, increasing in number
+every year. The jungle of the Canal Zone is a very tame and conquered
+jungle. The real article lies beyond the line where there is plenty.
+
+It was once thought that the best thing to do with the jungle was to let
+it run wild after its kind, as a barrier to invasion. A little
+experimenting proved that an army could cut its way through the jungle so
+fast that the brush was nothing more than a screen for the advance of the
+enemy.
+
+If the visitor stays long enough and gets close enough, he will learn of
+things which might have been done differently on a second trial, but
+regulation and adjustment have pretty well cleared up the points in
+question, and, taking it all through, the Canal is as satisfactory and
+complete a job as the world has ever seen.
+
+The Americans who live on the Zone are an interesting social experiment
+without knowing it. They form one of the unique communities of the world.
+Somebody has said that the Zone situation is described by the word
+"suburban," but that does not express it. Every man lives in a
+government-furnished house, rent free. Free also is his electric light and
+a ration of fuel for cooking. Ice is so cheap that it is practically free.
+He buys everything that he eats and wears in the commissary's stores,
+where goods are sold to him at cost. So they are--at what they cost _him_.
+Prices now do not differ materially from retail figures in the States on
+the same goods. If housekeeping tires, there are the commissary
+restaurants, clean and wholesome, always available for good meals at
+reasonable prices. Good schools are furnished free, of course, for the
+children. There is a free dispensary where all minor ailments are treated
+and medicine furnished free. The government hospitals are among the best
+in the world, and employees' rates are less than the cost of living at
+home. The Zone man is under Civil Service rules, receives a generous
+vacation, with a steamer rate to New York so low that it covers little
+more than his meals en route. The scale of his wages is based on an
+increase of twenty per cent over the pay for the same class of service in
+the United States. Cheap household service abounds and is about as
+satisfactory as household service is anywhere. If he is lonesome, the
+government clubhouse, with its community life, good recreation, and
+well-stocked reading room, is always open to him practically without cost;
+and if he gets tired of the Zone, there is always Panama and the interior
+country with its never-failing places of interest and exploration.
+
+Here are all the advantages of the socialized state and no workingmen or
+clerks in all the world are so well paid, or taken care of, as these
+Americans on the Zone. It is a fine, efficient piece of provision for the
+men who do the work. Therefore the Zone dweller should be a satisfied and
+happy man, dreading nothing but the day when he must return to the States.
+
+[Illustration: ENCHANTED ISLANDS IN GATUN LAKE]
+
+In practice, however, the American on the Canal Zone is not so contented
+as the external features of his lot would lead one to suppose. There is an
+undercurrent of petty complaint, directed at everything in general, and
+indicative of a state of mind as much as of actual evils existent. These
+complaints are the results of too much community life without room for
+individual ownership or initiative. The followers of Bellamy should come
+to the Zone and stay long enough to get a few pointers.
+
+The trouble is that there is necessarily much of uniformity of housing,
+commissary, social, and living conditions. The American people are, after
+all, strong individualists, and every man likes to have something that is
+distinctively his own.
+
+When people work all day together, play ball together till meal time, all
+eat the same things at the same price from the same store, on exactly
+similar tables, with identical dishes; when they go to the movies together
+and walk home down the same street together and sleep in houses and beds
+all alike, they sometimes develop cases of nerves.
+
+On the testimony of one of the efficient medical men of the Zone a lot of
+nervousness disappeared when war work absorbed the attention and energies
+of the patriotic Americans, who enthusiastically devoted their spare time
+to various forms of win-the-war industry.
+
+The problem of raising children on the Zone is admittedly beset with
+difficulties. Health conditions are good enough, but many people are prone
+to regard life on the Zone as a general vacation from the standards and
+disciplines of the homeland, and children are often allowed to do very
+much as they please. Many families employ a servant, and there is no
+economic need for children doing any useful act of work. An unusual degree
+of irresponsibility results. "It will be time enough to correct them when
+we get back to the States," is a common remark.
+
+Of course there are many families where the highest ideals are earnestly
+maintained, and no more faithful fathers and mothers may be found anywhere
+than here in this colony of voluntary exiles. But American life on the
+Canal Zone is at present apt to be regarded more as a vacation experience
+than as a serious attempt to face the whole problem of living.
+
+Moral and religious safeguards are not absent. The early plan of providing
+government-paid chaplains ended with construction days, and under the
+leadership of a group of farsighted laymen the Union Church of the Canal
+Zone was organized in February, 1914. All Protestant denominations except
+two now cooperate with this piece of ecclesiastical statesmanship. A
+centralized organization maintains work in all the civilian "gold" towns
+along the Canal, employing four pastors, who must be ordained men of
+evangelical churches. This Union Church does not regard itself as a
+denomination but as a federation for Christian service. No attempt is made
+to establish a doctrinal position, and members are not asked to sever
+their relations with their home churches. The excellent results attained
+under this management speak volumes for the wisdom of the plan and the
+earnestness and ability of the men who have fostered the enterprise from
+the start. The Union Church has devoted its benevolent moneys to opening a
+mission station at David in Western Panama, in cooperation with the Panama
+Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
+
+Morally, the Canal Zone is as clean as any place on earth. The improvement
+of moral conditions in Colon and Panama has done much to make the lives of
+Americans wholesome and to decrease the dangers to childhood that have
+existed in the past. There will always be Americans on the Canal Zone, and
+a few of them will exercise the great American prerogative of speaking
+their minds, but most of them will be better off here than at any other
+time in their lives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+PROWLING INTO THE FUTURE
+
+
+Many prophets have taken in hand to tell us what the Panama Canal is to
+bring forth in its commercial, social, political, geographical, and
+educational results for the world. Probably no world-event has ever had so
+much advance advertising as this much written-up achievement. Great as is
+the Canal, it came near being outshone in brilliancy by the publicity
+material sent out by journalists who found the subject to be profitable
+copy.
+
+In the main, the prophets were right. The world war postponed the arrival
+of some of the promised results, but it also enlarged the importance of
+the Canal and assured more extensive and far-reaching effects than could
+have been prophesied before the war began. It is now certain that we are
+to have a new and more closely united America than was formerly possible,
+and that the drawing together of the two Americas has been greatly
+accelerated by the world vindication of democracy. In this closer
+brotherhood of all Americans the Canal will play a large and important
+part.
+
+Just how far the stream of influences will flow cannot be told, but it is
+within the moderate possibilities to say that every country in the world
+will be affected by the changes due to the new waterway. The French
+originators of the first project saw an opportunity for commercial
+investment and hoped to make good dividends from the venture. They did not
+much concern themselves with by-products. The Americans who planned and
+pushed and persevered until the work was again begun were thinking of
+commercial and naval results, evident enough, but they could not have
+foreseen the far consequences to follow, nor could they have known that on
+the Canal Zone five or six related industries were to spring up under
+management of the Canal Commission. It is now about as difficult to
+predict the world-wide effects of the Canal factor as it would have been
+in 1903 to foresee the related industries of the present situation.
+
+Shortening of trade routes is the first and obvious consideration.
+Everything else grows out of the elimination of distances by the Canal
+cut-off. It requires no prophetic gift to take the figures from any good
+map and ascertain that from New York to San Francisco via Magellan is
+13,135 miles, whereas via Panama it is 5,262--a saving of 7,873 miles, or
+a month of steady steaming. Between New York and Honolulu there is a
+saving of 6,610 miles; and Yokohama is 2,768 miles nearer New York via
+Panama than by the Suez route. The list of distances saved may be
+indefinitely extended.
+
+[Illustration: PANAMA PUBLIC WATER WORKS, INTERIOR COUNTRY]
+
+If there were no results other than the saving of a week or a month of
+steamer time, the Canal would be cheap at several times its price. But
+these changes in steamer schedules and prices introduce an entirely new
+set of reactions into the commercial and social world, and this is where
+the interesting problems arise. Left to herself, nature tends to establish
+a balance of flora or fauna in any locality. Introduce a new plant or
+animal or microbe and all sorts of readjustments begin at once, and before
+a new balance is established almost anything may happen. Commerce finds
+its level in much the same way and by the same law. Introduce a radical
+disturbance, like the Panama short-cut, and everything begins to happen.
+Add the direct and indirect results of the war with its weakening of
+German influence and strengthening of inter-American interests, and we may
+have practically a new world before a new balance is established.
+
+Commercial interests naturally forge to the front in any discussion of
+canal results. So ably have these matters been discussed by experts that
+any repetition of figures and industries here would be beyond the scope of
+this work.
+
+It must be understood that the world war rendered obsolete our former
+ideas regarding trade between the United States and Spanish-America.
+Whether the extensive German political-commercial machine that covered all
+Latin-America can regain its prestige in fifty years to come remains to be
+seen, but it is certain that for a generation following the defeat of
+Germany by the free nations of the world North America will have a
+magnificent opportunity to enter South American trade on very advantageous
+terms. And the great bulk of the west-coast trade will pass through the
+Canal on its way to Gulf and Atlantic ports, as well as to Europe.
+
+The completion of the Panama Canal may be set down as the date of the
+discovery of Latin-America by the people of the United States. Previous to
+that date the North Americans were aware enough of the Monroe Doctrine,
+but almost unaware of the lives and interests of the nations living south
+of the Rio Grande River. With the opening of the Canal the North Americans
+began thinking south, and so far as the process has gone it has been very
+informing. Once the war is out of the way, the process will be greatly
+accelerated. With uninterrupted commercial conditions, five years of the
+expanded life due to the Canal will be about equal to sending the whole
+people back to school for a year. The cultural and geographical values of
+this new zone of thinking have hardly been felt as yet, but now that the
+attention of the world is released from the battlefields of Europe and the
+enormous social and financial problems arising from the expense of making
+the world decent once for all, the tide of interest is again turning
+southward along the shores of our own great oceans to the mighty events
+that await us there.
+
+Spanish-America has twelve republics and eight thousand miles of coast
+line on the Pacific ocean. The United States has a Pacific Coast of about
+fifteen hundred miles. The eight thousand miles marks the western
+boundaries of lands enormously rich in things that the world needs, but
+exceedingly poor in finished products or adequate growth. Probably no
+country on earth shows a wider margin to-day between present raw resources
+and possible high developments than these same twelve Spanish-speaking
+countries. The only analogy that bears on the case is that of the rapid
+and extensive advancement of the Pacific States after the completion of
+the transcontinental railroads. There is reason to believe that a similar
+record of progress awaits the west coast of South America.
+
+The combined foreign trade of the west-coast republics before the war
+reached the very respectable total of nearly one billion of gold dollars
+in a single year. There are commercial prophets who believe that within
+ten years from the completion of demobilization this volume of trade may
+be doubled. This means new markets, new industries, new development of
+mines, markets, manufactures, and agriculture, new colonization projects
+and a score of other unpredictable results. No less an authority than Mr.
+John L. Barrett says, "I believe that the Panama Canal will initiate in
+all South American countries a genuine movement which will have a most
+important bearing on the commerce and civilization of the world."
+
+An immense amount of iron lies buried in the mountains of the west coast.
+Not much has ever been done about it. But enormous quantities of ore have
+been destroyed by the processes of war, and South American iron may come
+to high values sooner than its owners have supposed.
+
+It is only recently that consideration has been given to the idea of
+establishing in connection with the Canal a great commercial
+trans-shipping point. Colon is yet a little town, mostly West Indian
+to-day, but already the Cristobal docks are piled high with South American
+products awaiting reshipment. The proposed establishment of a free port at
+Colon may yet result in a western Hongkong where the commerce of the seven
+seas comes together to be distributed to the five continents. Whatever
+might have been the results had there been no war, it is now sure that
+everything that happens in South America has henceforth a very definite
+significance for the United States. Whether we like it or not, we are out
+of our exclusive dooryard and will have to take our place on the great
+national street named America and play the game with our neighbors.
+
+For decades past Central America has been an unknown land to the United
+States. We have contentedly supposed that the only crop was that of
+revolutions and the only resources a few jungle fruits. But at last we are
+discovering Central America, and some of us are astonished to there find
+vast areas, fertile soils, varied and valuable products, intelligent
+peoples, a volume of commerce and climate fit for Eden. We knew little and
+cared less about Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and
+Panama; and since the bulk of trade of these lands was with Europe, they
+paid little attention to us. Why should they do otherwise?
+
+The presence of the United States on the Isthmus of Panama introduces a
+new factor into the American tropics. It looks very small and
+insignificant, that little ten-mile strip with the influence in Panamanian
+affairs, but how far the North American influence is going to reach out
+beyond the Zone limits cannot be known. Everybody is watching the results
+for revolution-proof, permanently peaceful Panama, and there are other
+countries not far away where there are people who are praying for
+something like it, or just-as-good, for themselves. Doubtless their
+prayers will not be answered directly but the influence of this leaven may
+work out into a wide circle and instigate movements that we have not
+counted upon.
+
+[Illustration: A JUNGLE CATHEDRAL]
+
+But the largest factor in the new American situation grows out of the new
+world-emphasis on the Golden Rule. At last the world understands as never
+before how finally determinative is the moral and spiritual factor in all
+human progress. We may never know just how much the world had paid to
+clear away the rubbish of autocracy and found the new age on the principle
+of a square deal for great and small; but the deed is done, and henceforth
+the one compelling sanction in all life must be the essential principle
+for which the Allies have spent their treasure and spilled their blood.
+The new internationalism will underlie all further development of
+relations between the two Americas, which opens a new world of social
+discovery and growth as fascinating as that which Columbus found in the
+physical surface of the globe.
+
+The greater results of the closer fellowship of North and South America
+will be registered in the realms of mind and spirit. Trade balances and
+stock dividends there will be, but back of and beyond these will rise the
+new American spirit, uniting the finest courtesy and artistic temperament
+of the Latin with the practical initiative and efficient vigor of the
+blend of blood in the United States. There is no gulf, great or small,
+fixed between the two races. Each has something that the other needs, and
+close fellowship will result in new race sympathy and mutual advantage.
+
+To ignore this basis of development is to forget that cold commercialism
+will in time chill the fervor of friendships and alienate the growing
+sympathy of nations. If we are to have no interest in our neighbors other
+than the profits we may make from their trade, we will soon cease to be
+friends and become bitter rivals at the big game of getting all we can.
+
+It takes two to play the game of reciprocal commercial success. If we
+succeed on the great international chess board, it will be not by shrewd
+defeat of our friends but by the coming to maturity of a high sense of
+honor and fair play on both sides. It is not one of us against the other,
+but both of us together against the normal difficulties of growth and
+production.
+
+One of the native leaders of Latin-American life has explained that South
+America was unfortunate in the character of the founders of her national
+institutions. Adventurers, explorers for gain, greedy conquistadores made
+the beginnings here, and the moral foundations were laid by religious
+leaders who traveled with pirates and plunderers and officially blessed
+their every act of crime. And from the beginning until now the type of
+religion that has prevailed in Latin-America has not assisted in the
+building up of free institutions, nor has it produced a high morality
+among the people.
+
+The South American struggle for self-government and free ideals has been a
+long, bloody, and heroic grapple with the reactionary and despotic forces
+brought over from mediaeval Europe. Men like San Martin and Bolivar deserve
+high honor for their work in breaking the bondage that held all life
+helpless. One by one the colonies threw off their political yokes and
+became republics, every one of them, in theory, modeled after the United
+States. The passion of the South American patriot has been home-rule, but,
+unfortunately, home-rule has not always meant self-government. That is
+quite a different matter. The overthrow of European despotisms was
+followed by innumerable internal revolutions. Panama had no monopoly on
+internal dissensions, and makes no claim that her fifty-three revolutions
+in fifty-seven years is the high-water mark of insurrections for South or
+Central America.
+
+In short, the mere overthrow of a despotic government does not assure
+stable political institutions nor efficient administration of public
+affairs. Good government by popular sovereignty is something far more
+fundamental than a matter of printed constitutions or shouting "Viva
+independencia!" in the plazas. Without moral responsibility and free
+consciences there can never be a successful democracy on earth.
+
+Free institutions and free consciences are winning out in South America,
+but it is in spite of the established church and not because of it. It is
+not politically a question of religion that we are discussing; it is a
+matter of organized, crafty, and unscrupulous opposition to every movement
+that makes for the development of democracy in South America. And since
+the establishment of a better understanding and closer fellowship between
+the two continents depends upon this very basis of free and morally
+responsible social and political leaders, the question is most vital.
+Everywhere there are a few intelligent, earnest men working away patiently
+and steadily at the problem of making South America democratic by making
+her people free to adopt with intelligence democratic institutions. One by
+one the nations have declared for freedom of worship and conscience, and,
+last of all, Peru, robbed and despoiled Peru of the conquest,
+priest-ridden and fanatical Peru, threw off the galling yoke of spiritual
+bondage and divorced church and state. It seems simple enough to read
+about it here, but at every step of the way the old church left unturned
+no stone of bigotry and intrigue and prejudice that could oppose the
+coming of the modern age to Peru.
+
+The supreme tragedy of South American life has been that the light that
+has been in her has been darkness. The spiritual leaders of the people
+have themselves opposed all progress toward the light. Until a spiritual
+leadership arises that will at least support aggressive and progressive
+movements toward freedom and democracy and moral uplift, slow progress
+will be made. And this matter concerns the whole American world. These are
+now our next-door neighbors, and their children will yet be playing in our
+yard.
+
+The surprising thing is that so much has already been accomplished with a
+millstone tied about the neck of all progressive movements. No finer
+tribute could be paid to the high ideals and large possibilities of South
+American character than a recital of the results accomplished by her
+intellectual and moral leaders in the face of enormous handicaps.
+
+The thinking minds of these southern republics are almost without a
+religion to-day. Long since have they ceased to give even passive assent
+to the demands of the commercial hierarchy that claims spiritual monopoly
+over the souls of man. Technical outward conformity to the requirements of
+the church may be a political advantage or a domestic convenience, but as
+a principle of life and foundation for thought the intellectuals are
+frankly agnostic. Man after man, when once confidence is gained, will
+state that they do not believe in the claims of the church, and usually
+have ceased to believe in anything at all--and these are the leaders of
+the intellectual life of the nations with which we are to deal. And what
+are they to do? No adequate substitute do they know, and until an open
+Bible and a living Christ take the place of the mummery and the crucifix
+we cannot denounce their course. Their intellectual nonconformity is to
+their credit.
+
+The final problem is that of developing people fit to live with, not
+mental and moral slaves under the dominance of superstition and
+intolerance. Back of the cry for wider and richer trade routes is the need
+of responsible men with whom we may transact business. More than shorter
+shipping line, we need better shippers, north and south. Underneath vast
+projects of material advancement lie all the social and industrial
+problems of labor and wages and exchange and credits and fidelity to
+contracts and personal honor. And above all this is the need of honesty
+and efficiency and a personal faith in a living God who knows and cares
+and takes account of what we do, of what we are, and is not to be bought
+off by a check or an incantation.
+
+[Illustration: SHOE-BILLS ARE SMALL]
+
+What the bigger American world needs is bigger and better Americans, Latin
+and Saxon. If the influences released by the Panama Canal help to produce
+these citizens of the larger horizon, one of the greatest services
+possible will be rendered to humanity. But the larger horizon is
+conditioned upon a larger hope that flows from the mountain of the more
+abundant life. And the Americans of the northland need the broader basis
+and vision and character as much as their southern neighbors.
+
+What really has the Panama Canal to do with all this? Much every way, but
+chiefly as a key for the unlocking of the long-closed doors and the
+releasing of long-latent forces of international relations in trade and in
+social and spiritual life. Should a great working example of educational
+and social and spiritual life be established at Panama by some concerted
+action of united Protestantism, the influence of the principles there
+promulgated by progressive and devout men would extend over a very wide
+range of Latin life. The procession that now passes through Panama will be
+doubled and trebled in the coming decades, and what is planted here will
+spread everywhere. "I saw it so done in Panama," may become the precedent
+for almost anything new, whether good or bad.
+
+The influence of such institutions in the City of Panama will be more
+far-reaching than if located on the Canal Zone. The Zone is wholly North
+American; Panama is thoroughly Latin. The institutions of the Zone are
+those of the United States and are looked on somewhat askance by Latin
+visitors. It is all very great and imposing, but it is so radically
+different in spirit and method, that points of close contact are hard to
+establish. Panama is a different matter. Whatever is done there by
+Spanish-speaking people will be visited and viewed with sympathetic
+interest and appreciation.
+
+The heart of living faith that is to impress its throb on this blood
+stream of Latin life must not be an imported made-in-the-States
+institution, or it will be but an ineffectual flutter. Likewise it must be
+something more comprehensive than the traditional schedule of occasional
+gatherings of the faithful, important as these will be. To do this work
+there needs be an interpretation of the Christian message that will relate
+itself to a very wide circle of human life and interests. Through native
+leadership and examples must be spoken a message that will compel
+attention and challenge the minds as well as the hearts of men. A living
+interpretation of a spiritual passion, a social service program with a
+heart in it, an educational work that will not only teach the curriculum
+but develop moral character, and intellectual propaganda of good
+literature, a physical gospel of health and exercise, a recreational life
+clean and wholesome, a personal moral standard of the New Testament
+grade--these are what are needed in Panama and, broadly speaking,
+everywhere else in Latin-America. Once established here they will be felt
+over a wide reach of the southern world.
+
+There is a lot of cheap and easy optimism that maintains that all will yet
+be well in some indefinite way. Some hopeful tourists have visited Panama
+and taken the trip about South America, apparently seeing nothing but the
+rainbow of promise everywhere. And these happy pilgrims have written
+books, assuring us with a maximum of glittering generalities that right is
+everywhere driving out wrong and that all will soon be well. Other writers
+assume this attitude consciously, out of regard for the interests that pay
+their expenses on the trip. Some people write in glowing terms from
+motives of consideration for the feelings of their South American friends.
+Would that we might tell only the bright sight of the story! It would be
+far more pleasant.
+
+But, after all, the facts are the irreducible minimum upon which to build
+all successful programs of reconstruction. Only when we reach the inner
+and deeper springs of life and character can we hope to open fountains of
+living waters for the desert of the human heart in bondage. Really to know
+Latin-America is to believe in its high and fine possibilities. What
+Latin-America needs is a fair chance.
+
+The end of the last great despotism of earth has left democracy a
+triumphant political principle in human government. Henceforth no nation
+may hope to keep step with the advance of mankind unless its political
+procedures are essentially democratic. And while South America has long
+had the form of democracy, it now becomes essential that her republics
+develop the working reality of effective self-government. To do this two
+things are indispensable. The successful democracy must be intelligent and
+must find a moral foundation in the free consciences and minds of
+self-disciplined citizens. Spiritual despotisms and religious
+superstitions never did and never will eventuate in a capacity for
+democracy. Only men who are intelligently free can exercise the functions
+of free governments.
+
+The only working basis of democracy, in short, is that system of religious
+ideals which has uniformly supported popular education, championed the
+rights of the oppressed, advocated self-government, welcomed
+investigation, and maintained freedom of conscience as of higher value
+than iron-bound uniformity to prescribed standards. It requires but a
+cursory glance at the record of history to know that no working democracy
+has ever survived the opposition of an ecclesiastical hierarchy that has
+remained the bitter foe of progress for a thousand years.
+
+There is more hope for Panama in the little Protestant chapel down by the
+Malecon and the efficient and modern school maintained there by the force
+of missionaries with their progressive ideals than in all the pageantry
+and glitter of a system of repression and despotism that the world is
+rapidly outgrowing. The religious Hun will take his place with the deposed
+political despot who proposed to destroy the liberties of mankind. The
+most urgent need of the mission work in Panama just now is that of trained
+and efficient Latin leadership. No people can be effectively lifted from
+without.
+
+A century ago nearly the whole of the southern world was in the throes of
+political readjustment. Self-government and political freedom were the
+watchwords and everywhere strong men arose and devoted their lives to the
+task of breaking from the necks of the people the political yokes under
+which they had staggered for two and one half centuries.
+
+To-day in Latin-America the second great struggle for freedom is under
+way. Bound minds and consciences, superstitions and moral
+despotisms--these are the stumbling-stones across the pathway of progress.
+All over Latin-America men are rising and enlisting their hearts and minds
+in the struggle for free consciences and independent judgment in the
+things of the Spirit. Nearly all these countries achieved political
+independence within a few years. When the climax came it was comparatively
+sudden, and it may be that the breaking of the chains of moral and
+spiritual despotisms will likewise be a shorter struggle than now seems
+possible. Once again the clock is striking, and who knows but the end of
+political despotism in all the earth may mark the rapid approach of
+spiritual democracy and highest liberty in all America!
+
+Heroic has been the long struggle in Latin-America for self-government.
+Splendid is the fight being made to-day for larger liberty. If
+Pan-Americanism means anything at all, it means a social foundation in
+honor and intelligence and brotherhood. It is time to address ourselves to
+the great unfinished task begun by those intrepid pioneers. The Canal is
+finished and the task of construction is done, but the end of construction
+is the beginning of empire-building for the larger task yet incomplete.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: All apparent printer's errors retained. Formatting
+transcribed as close as possible to original book.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Prowling about Panama, by George A. Miller
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