THE difficulties that beset the early travellers across the Isthmus of Panama over two hundred years ago still remain, and confront the explorer in these regions at every turn. Very little has been done to cultivate the rich lands which are capable of rapidly yielding in great abundance every kind of tropical fruit.

Few roads exist, and until some attempts are made thus to open up the country, little or no change will ever take place in the condition of the interior. The activity on the isthmus to-day is confined to the Canal Zone, but there are indications that in the near future the systematic cultivation of this hitherto neglected country will yield a harvest richer than any ever reaped by the gold seekers of Pizarro’s day.

The average Panamanian of the present day, true to the traditions of his race, has little inclination or no taste for husbandry, and is well content to occupy some trivial government position which brings him in a sure if small income, whilst putting no tax upon his intelligence. He has leisure to live a life of social gaiety in the capital, and spend his time in enjoying the intercourse with strangers passing over the highway to the Pacific coast. With the Spaniard’s love of an indolent life accentuated by a tropical climate, the only violent exercise they ever take is vehement talking by the hour, at all times and in all places on affairs of government. Panamanians are a strange mixture of many races. Spanish by descent, with an infusion of more or less Indian, negro, German, English, Dutch, and French blood, some of them claim that they are pure Indians, and therefore true Americans, and proudly point out that the inhabitants of the United States have not the same authority to call themselves American as the real descendants of the aborigines of the two continents.

But they are very amiable, these Panamanians, ever ready with a smile or salute as you pass them on the street, and with an infinite capacity for making acquaintances, if not for forming friendships.

Late in the afternoon you can see many of them astride prancing steeds, neat, round-bellied little animals, with finely-arched necks, tapering legs clattering along the newly paved streets, their small feet making a strange music like castanets. The saddles used are of the Mexican type, and the large leathern protections which surround the front portion of the stirrups give the riders a somewhat grotesque appearance. About the same hour a continuous procession of carriages drives along the Savannah road, many of them of smart appearance. The black coachmen are all more or less disfigured with tall, shining hats and brass-buttoned coats, but the occupants reclining behind them look beautiful and cool in bright-coloured gowns of amazing cuts. There are only two roads leading out of Panama over which carriages can pass, and consequently the drivers in the neighbourhood of the city are limited to them. One of these—that leading to Balboa—passes the cemeteries of the city. Until very recently a custom obtained in Panama with regard to the burial of the dead which was so repellent it is almost incredible that it could have existed even in a savage country. A concession was granted by the Government to one of its prominent citizens who let out graves on lease and collected rents from the relatives. Should they fall in arrears with the rent, the stony-hearted concessioner had little compunction in ordering his men to remove the remains from the vault in which they rested, and cast them into a waste bit of ground near by. Other cemeteries separated by walls from one another are provided for the interment of different religious bodies. Jews, Mohammedans, Chinese, Roman Catholics, and Protestants are each buried among their co-religionists.

The United States Government, with a sentimental regard for the feelings of its citizens, has, through the Canal Commission, made a rule that, should any citizen of the United States in the employ of the Commission die while on the isthmus, his body shall be embalmed and conveyed at the Government’s expense to any part of the United States that the relatives may desire.

That a reform of the burial system in Panama from a sanitary point of view was necessary and should have impressed itself upon the health authorities is not to be wondered at, but it only could have been brought about in this instance by the United States having full power over the health and sanitation of the country which adjoins their strip of territory. In the country districts there are, of course, no special burial grounds, but the small wooden crosses and cairns that are scattered up and down serve to mark the spots chosen for the interment of the dead.

There is one other cemetery about two miles from Colon called Mount Hope, better known on the isthmus as “Monkey Hill.” The graves marked with wooden crosses contain the remains of representatives of nearly every country in the world. The monuments erected are of the most flimsy materials, so that any indications of the last resting-place of thousands of the makers of the isthmian route will inevitably disappear. So accustomed were the inhabitants of Colon to the procession of the funeral train, that they became quite callous to the fate of the many who had been stricken with the deadly fevers so rampant in the place, and funerals going along the streets are usually followed by mourners engaged in lively conversation and smoking big cigars.

Close contact with these melancholy scenes is unavoidable in the small area in which the inhabitants of the towns of Colon and Panama dwell, and the high death-rate which both have suffered from has made their populations familiar with the trappings of woe.

The road that leads out of the city to the Savannahs, where the summer residences of the better class merchants are situated, is good, as it comes within the canal strip ceded to the States. It is mostly used by the gentry of Panama, and it has lately been extended right out to the ruins of the earliest Latin city in America, “old Panama,” which was destroyed by Morgan in his famous raid. Very little remains of the city which was known to its contemporaries as the “Golden cup of the West.” Its churches with rich altars, and houses filled with priceless tapestries, its richly furnished mansions, its opulent warehouses and wealthy inhabitants, belong to the past. The ruined tower and walls, all overgrown with jungle, that lie near the shore, are all that remain of the cathedral church of St. Anastasius. A couple of narrow masonry bridges near the city indicate where the famous “gold road” led into the town. Over this road, the Cruces trail which led from Panama on the Pacific to Porto Bello on the Atlantic, travelled the famous mule trains with their precious freights of gold and silver from Peru. The road can still be followed, a track of huge, irregular stones marking the course it took, and in some places fair-sized patches of the pavement are still intact. There is little interesting about the ruined city except its associations with the past. It is dead, and nature is striving hard to inter it decently beneath a luxuriant pall of green. One can only visit the spot to stir the imagination and call up its wondrous past. On this spot Pizarro banded his followers together, and from the now overgrown harbour walls his little fleet set sail on one of the most momentous voyages on record. The happenings in “old Panama” make the first page in the voluminous history of the great sub-continent.

Of the saloons and restaurants, with imposing names and uninviting aspect, much might be said. Even the best of them could be improved with little difficulty, but they serve well enough the uncritical tastes of their patrons. The better class cafÉs or bars in Colon and Panama are generally attached to hotels; and in the time when the French Company’s headquarters were in the Plaza at Panama the cafÉs and saloons were filled with exuberant life, until the early morning hours, and the larger and more important bars were the most popular places in the

city. But to-day the clubs have taken the places of saloons, as far as the higher officials are concerned, while the spread of the canal offices all along the route has greatly affected the business of the saloons. Still on Saturdays and Sundays many of the gold employees on the Zone (clerks, steam-shovel men, engineers, foremen, supervisors, timekeepers, and others, whose occupation it would be difficult to discover) flock into Panama, to witness the baseball games and meet their friends. At such times the saloons and bars enjoy once more a taste of their almost forgotten popularity. The most important saloon is that attached to the Hotel Central in the Plaza. If you sit in it from early morning till late in the evening, you will be certain to meet with every important person in the city. Some you would see very often, others but seldom. Their merry chatter and hilarity make the place lively, and their almost unquenchable thirst keeps the bar-tender busy. Always parched and thirsty themselves, they are obsessed with the opinion that everybody they meet is suffering from the same complaint. Before dinner-time, about half-past six in the evening, the crowd in the saloon of the “Central” gathers, and each small round table is the centre of a noisy group of companions who order cocktails, “high bulls,” and other cheering concoctions. Meanwhile small boys shout the evening paper, a miserable little sheet that never contains any news sufficiently important to cause comment, for all the information it prints has been discussed hours before. Nevertheless, many copies are sold, for the Panamanian, ever anxious to keep abreast with the manners and customs of civilised communities, generally buys a copy. Old women with lottery tickets do quite a large business at this hour, for after the twentieth cocktail even the most accomplished drinker becomes a little regardless and throws his money about recklessly. But for all that, great care is taken in choosing with a becoming semblance of sober judgment a number that the purchaser has some very particular fancy for. Once a ticket has been sold, the demands of others, always ready to emulate the plunging of a good sportsman, keep the vendor of chances busy. Two or three of the roysterers will join together and purchase a ticket between them. The division into shares and complex allotments of the ticket invested entail the making of illegible notes and memoranda which serve to give a business-like air to the transactions. More small boys, wearing a grin that makes up for the scantiness of their clothing, dart in and out through the open doors with paper bags containing pea-nuts, and soon dispose of their entire stock. Piles of these nuts lie on each of the little tables, and the cracking and munching sounds as they disappear make up for breaks in the conversation. The stone floor soon assumes the aspect of a newly gravelled pavement, and the parties begin to separate and make their ways to dinner. Thus early in the evening is the “Central” saloon deserted, and should the visitor be desirous of being in the crowd after this hour, he must seek some other resort. At the numerous gatherings and entertainments which take place in Panama a great variety and odd assortment of types from every quarter of the globe are encountered. Quite apart from the casual gatherings of transients at the hotels, there are many opportunities for those who appreciate gaiety to indulge their taste to the full. Scarce a week passes but there are two or three balls, receptions given by members of clubs or private residents, and visitors to the city generally receive invitations.

The weekly reception by the President is usually well attended by the Panamanians and visitors, while many of the Canal Commission officials put in an appearance, and with their white uniforms lighten the scene. The official residence of the President guarded by about twenty lounging, diminutive policemen, is alive with bustling movement, and carriages in all stages of decay line the street outside. After leaving your hat with a very unofficial-looking servant at the entrance, you pass into a large salon, and are introduced to the President, who stands near the door. Many of the leaders of fashion and society are assembled in the room, and you soon discover that a free and easy air entirely devoid of anything like formality pervades the apartment. Puzzle games that long ago were sold by the vendors of cheap novelties on the streets of big cities lie around on tables in heaps to amuse the guests, while at circular tables, placed at one end of the room, elderly, stout persons sit playing at the game of puff-ball. The room, about one hundred feet long by thirty feet wide, is furnished with gilded chairs and lounges and tables, and along the top of the walls, doing duty as a frieze, are a series of poorly painted portraits.

These pictures are painted on the surface of the wall, and round each is an oval frame or wreath, also painted in yellow colours, to represent gilding.

Past Governors and patriots and statesmen all glare down on their successors in the game of politics. For whom they all were intended, and what names the originals bore, it is doubtful if any of the present generation could tell, for all the South American republics have scores of heroes whose reputations and fame have long been forgotten, and there are few who have sufficient interest in the past to keep green the records of the illustrious dead. The living specimens of “patriots,” who with perfervid zeal talk of their country’s rights and wrongs, its present and its future, are certainly a better-looking lot than their predecessors, but it may be that the artists who limned the features of the latter have not done the originals justice.

The ladies of Colombia are proverbial for their good looks, and those of Panama are no exception. The popular conception of the jealousy of Spanish husbands, who are commonly supposed to be rather ready with the knife and stiletto, is quite erroneous, at least as far as Panama and Colombia are concerned.

The ladies of Colombia affect the fashions of Europe and Paris, and in Panama one sees but few of the older picturesque fashions that still obtain in many of the cities and towns of the interior. Some of the poorer classes still wear their thick, black hair in two long plaits hanging over their shoulders, and a few of the costumes are rather original, consisting of black silk skirts cut sufficiently close to show the form, a large kerchief thrown over the head, and falling in long folds down to the waist. The mantilla is worn by some, but newer fashions are fast ousting every kind of national dress. In Cartagena and Bogota are seen more of the older, picturesque forms, but it is only amongst the lower orders

in Panama that frills and flounces still linger. Smoking is quite common amongst the women all over Latin America, and the fair sex in Colombia are no exceptions. Their cigars are often carried in their hair. In Panama the ladies have a freedom that is quite notorious; far from being confined behind iron gratings, they are allowed the diversions of balls, dances, supper parties, and receptions, without any fear of the control of their husbands, who are not always in attendance. The Panamanian seÑoras are extremely good-natured, and their bright smiles and dangerous glances are bestowed with a careless freedom that would shock their fair sisters in Buenos Ayres. The education of women in South America generally is not so far advanced as it is in the northern continent or in Europe, though they are generally proficient, and frequently excel in musical accomplishments. They are perhaps no worse than the women of other lands in their love of gossiping and scandal, and, accustomed to flattery from their earliest years, and with interests narrowed down to a limited range of subjects, it is little wonder that they are incapable of conversing long or interestedly upon any topic save love, and that when it gives out they should fall back upon scandal. They weary over books, and turn over the pages with but a languid interest, and to any exercise save dancing they are naturally averse. Their conversation is rather free and unrestrained, and they talk glibly of the secret lovers of their dearest friends. Their beauty is but skin deep and wears rather badly; their indolent habits cause them soon to assume a bulkiness of form quite inconsistent with grace or comeliness, and it is only their passionate devotion to dancing that prevents them from becoming positively unwieldy.

Ministers and Consuls from other republics abound at the receptions and balls, and the many fashions in whiskers, beards, and moustaches provoke much comment and many smiles. Merchants, shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, concessioners, their wives and daughters, all jostle one another in the crush. The rooms get stiflingly hot as the evening wears on; the balcony outside is invitingly cool, and the quiet beauty of the night contrasts strongly with the noise and glitter of the saloons. Across the bay lie the undulating hills, all but lost in a translucent opal pall; the myriads of stars overhead shine with a glory that evokes ejaculations of admiration, the more brilliant of them are reflected with many a tremor in the placid sea beneath. Lights on distant boats bob up and down, while the murmur of the waves as they break gently on the shore makes a music that can be heard above the sound made of all human speech that floats out of the open doors from the salon.

At supper parties it is quite a usual thing for speeches proposing toasts to be made, and when once they are started there is no stopping the flow of oratory. They love long-worded speeches almost as much as the Brazilians, and will listen to themselves and others for hours, and it must be admitted that they have a ready if a simple wit on all occasions. I have heard a Panamanian after dinner make an impromptu speech, in which he felicitously described all the guests around the table, and if his incisive humour was at times a little grotesque and his satire biting, the subject of his jest was as delighted as the rest of his audience at his sallies.

On the last day of the old year I had an opportunity of seeing the Panamanians really enjoying and proving their capacity for entertaining themselves. A ball was given by one of the clubs on 31 December, and as their new president entered on his duties the moment the numerous clocks in the city should cease striking twelve, a fine occasion for a speech presented itself. All the company assembled in the ballroom about ten minutes before the dying year yielded up its last gasp of time. The ladies were seated on two long rows of chairs facing each other, while their attendant cavaliers stood immediately behind them. Each held a brimming glass, awaiting patiently till the time should arrive for the toast. At the last stroke of midnight the new president of the club stepped forward and addressed the assembly. As he went on speaking eloquently of the high honour of the office to which he had been elected, the duties of which he was now entering upon, expatiating on the dignity of the position and the halo it spread round the holder, it seemed probable that all the spirit, as well as the sparkle, would evaporate from the generous wine before any of the guests would have a chance of capturing it. When at last he made an end, after having been actively engaged upon his new duties for full half an hour, all raised their glasses and drank, not New Year’s wishes to one another, but to the success of the club and the health of its new president.

Dancing was resumed when the glasses had been drained and wishes exchanged for prosperity and happiness during the coming year, but it was not until a late or, rather, early hour and after all the ladies had been served with supper that the men settled down to the enjoyment of a long-deferred repast. Bottle after bottle was emptied, and each one round the festive table made a gallant effort to vie with his neighbour in inventing some new toast. Every nationality represented at the board was the recipient of lengthy adulation, and if the good feeling voiced by all present could only be extended to the courts and Governments of the world, little business would be left for Peace Congresses to transact.

The whole of the first of January was devoted to a round of festivities, and the powers of endurance displayed by many were amazing.

Hard or even moderate drinking is said to be a dangerous habit in hot countries, and the medical profession is almost unanimous in condemning the use of alcohol, whilst the old theory that it is a necessity in hot climates has been exploded by scientific investigation, for the enlarged liver which is so common in the torrid zone is no doubt contributed to by the alcoholic habit.

But it is a notorious fact that inhabitants of countries subject to earthquakes and volcanoes get inured to all idea of danger, and walk on the very brink of disaster with a light and merry heart, indifferent to the lessons of experience or the fate of their predecessors, and on that New Year’s Day the orgies of the Buccaneers were equalled, if not excelled, by many of the inhabitants.

At midday the bandstand in the Plaza was occupied by many of the leading citizens, who with musical instruments, upon which they were incapable of performing, were making an unearthly din, and had attracted a crowd of the common people around them. Tables laden with champagne bottles and glasses were placed between the groups of performers, who were not less ardent in their attentions to the glass than to the instruments of music which they converted into engines of torture. Whenever their confused vision was capable of distinguishing friends amongst the passers-by, an effort was made to strengthen their forces by a capture, and wise persons kept in the background, and witnessed their descent upon the unwary. Every now and then a scuffle would ensue, and those who fell during its progress were content to remain in the positions they had assumed, to the amusement of the spectators.

It is a custom to make good resolutions on New Year’s Day, and to turn over a new leaf. On the following morning, although a trifle belated, many resolves were made, and the penitents heartily swore that nothing on earth should tempt them from their vows. The fervour with which they denounced the cheering cup, and their repugnance to it, was a strong illustration of the proverb, “Familiarity breeds contempt”; but by the end of a week all traces of their exertions had disappeared, and most of them were as ready as ever to face manfully any other duty in the way of celebration that occasion might present.