they supplanted by having such fiends as Morgan let loose upon them. And, as we steamed across that lonely, peaceful sea, I could not help picturing Morgan and his unspeakable host of villains sailing in their motley fleet in the same direction, each one of them panting with lust of blood and plunder, an awful contrast to our serene and peaceful errand. Also the contrast between the conditions of life on board those old buccaneering vessels and ours is so great that the mind can hardly take it in, will refuse to realize how it was possible for men to live at all under such bestial circumstances, with such nameless horrors in the way of food and drink to keep them up to their work as the buccaneers did.

Sunday at sea in these ships is always, to me at least, a delightfully peaceful time. It is a day of rest indeed, for even those extraordinarily energetic souls who consider every moment wasted unless they are playing some of the ordinary ship games feel it incumbent upon them to refrain from them to-day. But for the crew that day there was only the rest obtainable in the watch below. The watch on deck and a large gang of laborers were tremendously busy removing from the ship the last traces of that most essential but terribly soiling operation of coaling. In Kingston they had received on board during our absence sufficient coal to last the ship back to England, and so dry was it that, in spite of every precaution being taken to localize the uncleanness, coal dust had permeated into apparently impossible places. But so energetic was the attack made upon the cleaning that by the time Sunday was well over the ship was restored to her ordinary condition of purity. I could not, however, help feeling like a heartless Sybarite, as I lay luxuriously on the promenade deck in a long chair watching the pro

ceedings. I felt as if I had no business to be loafing while so many of my shipmates were thus toiling. I do not think I shall ever get used to it.

At daylight next morning the coast of Central America was revealed close at hand, and at seven o'clock we rounded the low spit upon which Colon stands, and, in company with the British cruiser Retribution, steamed slowly in. She, of course, came to an anchor, but we went in alongside the wharf in our usual easy nonchalant style, the whole operation from stopping the engines taking only about ten minutes. Here we found a motley collection of steamships. There was a Spaniard, a Frenchman, a Norwegian, a German, and two Americans, vessels of the direct New York line these latter. The remainder of our passengers from England, all on business bent, now prepared to leave us, to my great regret, for our fellowship had been of the pleasantest. Moreover, so bad was the impression I had received of Colon and the Isthmus generally from the lurid stories I had heard and read of its extreme unhealthiness that I felt pity for them being compelled to land here. Most of them, however, were crossing the Isthmus in order to take ship at Panama for Chili and Peru.

So uninviting did the place seem that I felt not the slightest inclination to go ashore, especially as the heat threatened to exceed any that we had yet experienced. But I was assured that yellow fever, which used to slay great numbers of people here regularly, had been practically stamped out by careful destruction of mosquito germs. All pools of stagnant water were treated with kerosene, which spreads a thin film over the surface and is a barrier of death to the newly developed mosquito through which he cannot pass. By this simple means of destroying the malignant little inoculators of disease,

an immense and permanent benefit to the dwellers in Panama has been established, and now by all accounts once deadly Colon has been robbed of its most grisly terror. There was another reason why I should go ashore; I had heard-as who has not?-of the tremendous fiasco of the Panama Canal, of the masses of material dumped here and allowed to lie unclaimed, unnoticed, unwanted. The whole story was so strange that it seemed quite necessary to see for oneself evidences of the shameful waste, incompetency, and peculation that abounded in Canal times before being really able to believe it all. Still, I doubt if I should have gone had it not been for the courtesy of the company's agent, who procured me a free pass by railway to Panama, and telegraphed to the agents in Panama to meet me and do everything for me that I could wish. So I shook off my sloth and faced the glare, having several gentlemen from the ship with me for company. In passing I may say that the railway is American, with all the faults of the American railway and none of its excellences. The distance is forty-seven miles, the time taken three hours, and the fare firstclass, which is much inferior to third class at home, is £4 return. So that I think I am justified in calling it the most expensive railway for its length in the world; and yet when one considers the frightful expenditure of life in the building of it, no mere money payment would appear adequate to repay. It is said that every sleeper cost the life of a man, and I have no diffculty in believing it. My great trouble is to understand how men could live at all, let alone work, in the dank steamy undergrowth of the long malaria-haunted levels along which the railway runs for many miles. And going back farther still, how did the old Spaniards ever march and fight in this awful climate, even wearing armor, in

which one would have thought they must have roasted like a lobster in its shell before a fierce fire? Englishmen, too; but there! what is there of the seemingly impossible in the most terrible climates in the world which Englishmen have not done? Yet even Kingsley, magician as he is, never succeeds in wondrous "Westward Ho" in making one realize the furnace-like heat of these equatorial forests; in fact, I doubt if any one could. Only actual experience can convince.

However, I must not anticipate. The train was to start at 10 A.M., so, dressing in my lightest flannels, I strolled up the wharf and into the train. There was hardly any place that one could say with any certainty was the station. For here, as in so many old towns in Central America, everything seemed casual, ramshackle, impermanent; as if possibly it might have to be abandoned in a hurry. The railway ran, or crawled, windingly along the main street, the houses upon which gave no hint of the amazing flow of wealth into this place a handful of years ago. Indeed, the casual visitor would jump at the conclusion that most of the soi-disant shops were just drinking dens; and I was solemnly given to understand that the soil upon which Colon stood was a rich compost of corpses and sewage, since in Canal days, as in revolutionary times, men died like flies, and were hurriedly shoved out of sight anywhere they happened to be, while, as for sanitation, I doubt if the word has any meaning at all to a Central American. I climbed into the train doubtfully, the big bell on the front of the engine tolled dolefully, more Americano, and we started along the street. Tony Veller, Esq., said the whistle of a locomotive always seemed to express: "Here's 250 souls in mortal terror, an' here's their 250 screams in vun," but the American locomotive starting always seems to

say: "I am going to kill a lot of people before I stop, and so I'm tolling their knells beforehand."

It was some little time before we "gathered way" as a sailor would say, for the locomotive was almost a toy (albeit a very dirty toy), but presently we were bowling along the level sand amidst a tangled growth of banana trees, coco palms, and wooden huts, some of which made pretensions to being shops, usually kept by Chinamen, on one side, and an untidy beach sloping down to a dazzlingly blue sea on the other. And then we ran into an oven. A perfect forest of bananas in full bearing encroached upon the line and shut out all breeze while the sun vertically showered down his fervent glare upon us. Through the open windows of the car came a steady shower of soot, for the locomotive was burning patent fuel, and its combustion was far from perfect. Very soon those of us who were newcomers had reduced our garments to the simplest elements, and were looking enviously upon certain cold-blooded individuals who, even in this stewing heat, were wearing serge coats, vests, and trousers. How or why do they do it? I do not know. I am aware that some people have a theory that what will keep out cold will keep out heat, but as far as I am concerned that theory is a false one.

The speed, never exceeding twenty miles an hour, suddenly slackened, and the train stopped, apparently for breath, but really at a station, although at first nothing was visible but the dense boscage around. But on closer inspection a long low shed came into view, and adjacent to it could presently be made out, amid the overgrowth of greenery, great heaps of railway material. And thenceforward, until we reached the great Culebra cutting, we were continually passing rows of locomotives, of travelling cranes, none of which had ever moved

in their own proper vocation, and row after row of construction wagons. The rank vegetation of the country had played the strangest pranks with these productions of an alien civilization. In one place I saw a noble young palm growing erect and sturdy out of the chimney of a locomotive, and in many others strange plants of every conceivable shape and manner of growth were wreathed around wagon wheels, climbing lovingly over cranes, and wandering at their own sweet will about intricate pieces of machinery destined never to fulfil the part for which they were produced. Occasionally we caught glimpses of the Chagres River, every bend and eddy of which said loudly, "Beware of alligators!" and sometimes we came across a picturesque group of women and bright, bronze-like little children, naked as the day, engaged in washing on the verge of some sparkling stream. Be sure that wherever you see the negro woman in this country-outside of the towns, that is-she will not be idle. and in nine cases out of ten she will be laboriously making cotton or linen clothes dazzlingly white. Never mind how, only be certain that the garments will not last long. But as that minor trouble is not confined to any one district in the world where washerwomen are to be found, it would be invidious to dwell upon it here.

Presently we emerged from the stifling banana-growing lowlands into a fairly picturesque country, the sides of the line being dotted at decreasing intervals with piles of rusting railway material as before noted. And then suddenly the mighty Culebra cutting came into view, that Titanic work where a mountain has been hewn in twain in order to allow the biggest ships in the world to pass through it on their way between the Atlantic and the Pacific. This great piece of civil engineering was, with the exception of

the pier at the mouth of the Chagres River and the piles of useless machinery, the first evidence we had yet seen of the uses to which those squandered sixty millions of Panama Canal funds had been put. In itself it was a stupendous piece of work, compelling admiration and respect for the labors of those who had designed and carried it out. But our view of it was brief, for there was no station just there, and we were soon carried out of sight of it. Then we suddenly came upon the first hopeful sign we had seen in this much harassed, badly governed country. We stopped at a large straggling village, misnamed "Empire," and immediately became aware of a new and entirely desirable human element. Mingling nonchalantly with the slouching furtive crowd of parti-colored people were several keen-looking well-set-up youths, whose faces were as full of intelligence as their movements were of self-confidence. They wore an eminently businesslike rig; I felt thankful to be able to call it a uniform, remembering as I did, the hideous travesty of clothing that soldiers have so long been called upon to wear, a garb seemingly designed to prevent the wearers from doing those violent acts and deeds which they were intended to perform. They wore blue shirts open at the neck and with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, khaki pants and gaiters, and serviceable yet not heavy-looking boots. Round their waists were bandolier belts, at one side of which hung a revolver. A khaki-colored hat with brim turned up at one side completed this smart costume, making the wearers look eminently fit and workmanlike. These were American soldiers sent by the great Republic to preserve the peace of the Isthmus under the new agreement by virtue of which the United States has contracted to finish the Panama Canal. They were the 1383

LIVING AGE.

VOL. XXVI.

visible signs of Northern law and order, the only thing needed in this distracted country to make it wealthy and steadily prosperous.

The reason for their presence was explained by the fact that the negotiations between the Republic of Panama and the Government of the United States had just been completed, and one of the clauses in the compact gave the latter the right to maintain order along the line of their property-if I am not wrong in describing the Canal and its adjacent land for a certain distance on either side as their property. I know it is not so called in official documents, but the difference in my name and theirs is only a difference in phraseology-we both mean the same thing. When a people like the Americans of the United States purchase a concession like that of the Panama waterway, and, owing to the incompetence of its nominal owners, are obliged to send troops there to protect the property, there can be no question of the restoration, or retrocession rather, of the reclaimed country to its original semi-savagery. And in spite of my distrust of the Americans, and my utter detestation of their business methods, I am heartily glad to see them in Panama. They will, I feel sure, make an amazing change for the better in that hitherto unsavory land, and, having undertaken their gigantic task, national pride will not permit them to relinquish it, whatever the cost.

Already one sees signs of the coming beneficent revolution beyond that of the presence of the American soldiers; keen-faced, smartly dressed men, with that alert nonchalance so characteristic of the American man of business, are pervading the Isthmus, not at all on pleasure bent, but taking the measure of things in their several capacities, and each absolutely determined that whoever gets "left" in the pursuit of the almighty dollar it shall not be he.

Even the inhabitants of this land of “mañana" are awaking to the fact that "mañana" is to be changed to "ahora," to-morrow to now. And that in itself is a portent of no mean dimensions. But I am lingering long on the road to Panama City, almost as long as that procrastinating soot-showering train. No bad likeness of a chimney-sweep out for a holiday, with eyes full of grit and parched throat, I emerged at last at the mean collection of shacks doing duty for the Panama Terminus of this most important railway. I was at once taken in charge by a courteous polyglot young German, who, for a great wonder, did not show his contempt for me because I was an Englander and also a new chum. Perhaps the fact of my having been specially recommended to his good offices, by the great company for which his firm was agent, had more than a little to do with his most kindly reception of me. He hurried me into a carriage, and we drove off at once to the Grand Central Hotel, along the very worst roads I have yet travelled in this part of the world, so bad, indeed, that after ten minutes' drive I felt as if all my teeth were loose, and I was positively sore with bumping about. So villainous were the roads that I kept mentally comparing them with some I had suffered from in Boston and Chicago, and wondering if these were not really worse. So that when we pulled up in front of the hotel-I beg its pardon, the Grand Central Hotel-I had seen nothing of Panama at all.

A very short experience of this hotel is sufficient to cause each newcomer to scan the faces of the American visitors keenly in the earnest hope that some of them are potential hotel proprietors.

For some American will surely confer an inestimable boon upon his fellow men-and women-by starting and carrying on a decent hotel in

this most important place. Only think of it! here, on the great highway of the Isthmus, in its principal city, where all the year round there is a steady stream of visitors on business or pleasure bent, the principal, almost the only, hotel is a sort of tenth-rate boarding-house, of which the only thing not entirely condemnatory that can be said about it is that it is big. And for housing like paupers and feeding like pigs one pays like a prince-eight dollars for a bottle of very medium claret, equivalent to sixteen shillings English. I do not wish to deal in superlatives, either eulogistic or condemnatory, but I would strongly advise tourists bound to Pacific ports who are taking this route to put in the time they have to wait at Colon, where there is a decent hotel that compensates for the other drawbacks of the port, rather than be made miserable at Panama and fleeced most shockingly into the bargain. However, the Americans will alter all that. Under their régime one will have to pay, of course, and a high price, but there will be an equivalent for the

money.

After luncheon, as a carriage drive was impossible, a small party of us sallied forth, first visiting the historic Cathedral, which stood on the opposite side of the Plaza to our hotel. While changing I had noted from my cell window the ruinous condition of the building, and especially the way in which, through utter neglect, the various parasitic plants of the country were gradually covering the towers and terraces of the building with a rich mantle of vegetation, the roots of which were, of course, displacing the stones with which the edifice built. Not that it ever had been a fine building in any sense of the word. Its design was practically the same as usual in these countries and in Malta, two dumpy towers at the corners of an almost flat front, and a long barn-like

was