From Broadway to Old Spain

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HE varied population [in Colon] was very interesting. Many Americans and some English walking about, but by far the greater part of the people from pale Spanish yellow to deep West Indian blacks. Of course there were no shop windows, but open stores, the best being kept by Chinese merchants who have had the principal trade of the Isthmus for years. They seem to be thoroughly respected.

The contrast between the two towns, Colon, the old Spanish one, with narrow streets and foreign houses, dirty halfdressed people of all sorts, and Christobal, the new American town, with broad roads, large bird-cage houses and rows of palms, is very great. The same contrast strikes one at Panama between the old town of that name and the new Ancon, just outside. It is curious that while the whole Canal Zone, forty-seven miles long and ten wide, belongs to the United States, these two small cities at either end have been reserved by the Republic of Panama. To step from Broadway or Fifth Avenue into the heart of Old Spain is a very new experience.

Bird-Cage Houses

The Isthmian Canal Commission Hospital, at Colon, of which the Rev. E. J.

Cooper, a Church clergyman, is chaplain; a collection of buildings, some of which are on piles over the sea, and all of which are carefully screened to keep out the mosquitos, giving to them, as to the houses, the effects of great bird cagesan impression one never loses. Everyone lives in a bird cage from end to end of the Isthmus. Hotels, private houses and quarters for workmen all are alike, so that there is a vague, dreamy, unsubstantial look about them, as if they might rise and float away. And yet the effect is very pretty as they lie on the hillsides, often half hidden by palms and tropical plants.

The Zone from a Car Window

The railroad journey [from Colon to Panama] gave me my first idea of the greatness of the work of the canal. The massive mounds of earth, the many railroad lines at Gatun, the new town with its bright looking houses and other large buildings, made a quite new impression. I had not expected anything so well laid out, so clean, so civilized, and so full of life and strength. So modern too, for the people who got out at the station might have been at any American town. Ladies well dressed with children, girls with parcels, pictures or rolls of music, small boys running about, a few men, all alert, talking, laughing; the fringe of dark people and the background of red

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the wonderful "Flame of the Forest" that lights up the woods in Burmah; there again acres of purple morning glories, here a square mile of bananas, and everywhere many varieties of palms and giant bamboos.

Here, too, the troublesome Chagres river, so winding and so beautiful between its green banks, and yet so tough a problem to those same engineers. It will be drowned, problem and all, in this wonderful lake. Only the official map can give an idea of what that will be.

American is at home here under this glorious sky, and has come to stay.

Before our journey was half finished the darkness came down and I had time to notice the people in the car. The car itself was light and cool. No velvet furnishings, all wood and rattan, the seats wide enough for comfort. Some of the passengers, like ourselves, are white, but by far the larger number are of Spanish color, feature and language. There are cars of different classes and some are crowded with West Indian people of varying shades of blackness with a small sprinkling of Hindoos. But there is no dulness anywhere. Every face is bright and eyes are keen and animated. All is life and movement. All through my five days this has impressed me. No tropical slowness here, but a great body of energetic, forceful men working vigorously in carrying out their great purpose. Every train is full, every railroad platform with waiting numbers; at some stations like Culebra on Sunday afternoon the crowd runs into hundreds.

As we went along we saw many other new things.

Here a village of native Panamanians, built of rushes and bamboos, a few women and children in light costumes looking carelessly at us; there a mass of trees flaming in color reminding one of

Another Hospital

The Canal Commission Hospital at Ancon is one of the largest and certainly the most beautiful in the world. Spread out on the side of Ancon Hill, surrounded with cocoanut palms and other tropical trees, with a glorious view of the bay before it, it has 800 beds in thirty-four wards. Each ward is a separate building and there are many others for administration, nurses, etc. Of the multitude of nurses, 125 are American graduates. It was new to see