. Souvenir: trip of congressional party to Panama, March 12-18, nineteen hundred and seven; . ain instead of hisfarm or garden patch. While the railroad across the Isth-mus is the only one in the Republic,the telegraph and telephone systemsare fairly good and cover the countrypretty well. Panama is almost fivehundred miles in length and most ofits towns can only be reached by boat,either on the Atlantic or the Pacificcoast, but you can communicate read-ily with all the important towns overthe wires. The native Panaman is small ofstature. He has used liquor to excess,and as a result after sever
. Souvenir: trip of congressional party to Panama, March 12-18, nineteen hundred and seven; . ain instead of hisfarm or garden patch. While the railroad across the Isth-mus is the only one in the Republic,the telegraph and telephone systemsare fairly good and cover the countrypretty well. Panama is almost fivehundred miles in length and most ofits towns can only be reached by boat,either on the Atlantic or the Pacificcoast, but you can communicate read-ily with all the important towns overthe wires. The native Panaman is small ofstature. He has used liquor to excess,and as a result after several genera-tions his physical power of resistenceis very low. He is kindly, affection-ate and good to his family. In a totalpopulation of 340,000 it is estimatedthat not more than ten per cent areresponsible citizens, and not over fivepercent are educated. About five percent of the population is white, andabout ten per cent Indian. Of the re-maining eighty-five per cent probablythe proportion of mixed blood is twen-ty per cent white, forty per cent In-dian and forty per cent negro. These \. are the figures given by some of theAmericans who have been on theIsthmus for years and have made care-ful inquiry. The native Panamanis indolent, and without ambition toaccumulate property. He is satisfiedto live from day to day on the fruitswhich nature provides. It has beensaid that he can get along by swing-ing in a hammock, rocking it with histoe and picking bananas with hishands. While a large percentage ofthe births are classed as illegitimate,it cannot be said that the Panaman-ians are immoral; rather they are un-moral. They are accustomed to thecommon law marriage. In many sec-tions of the county priests are inacces-sible, and for years the marriage feeswere so high that the natives wouldhave to work for months before theycould earn enough to pay for havinga ceremony performed. Even now thecivil authorities authorized to solem-nize these marriages are often manymiles away, and throug
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