Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . have heard that, onthe smaller ships that carrythem by hundreds for the500 miles for five dollarseach, they sometimes riotand make trouble. With usthey were inoffensive, thoughit is perhaps as well thatthe passenger quarters areto windward of them. Thereligious sentiment is strongupon them and as the sungoes down in the waste of wa-ters the wail of hymn tunessung to the accompanimentof a fiddle and divers mouthorgans rises over the whistleof the wind and the rumble ofthe machinery. One can butreflect that ten years ago, be-fore the coming of Col.
Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . have heard that, onthe smaller ships that carrythem by hundreds for the500 miles for five dollarseach, they sometimes riotand make trouble. With usthey were inoffensive, thoughit is perhaps as well thatthe passenger quarters areto windward of them. Thereligious sentiment is strongupon them and as the sungoes down in the waste of wa-ters the wail of hymn tunessung to the accompanimentof a fiddle and divers mouthorgans rises over the whistleof the wind and the rumble ofthe machinery. One can butreflect that ten years ago, be-fore the coming of Col. Gor-gas and his sanitation sys-tem, three out of five of thesehappy, cheerful blacks would never return alivefrom the Canal Zone. Today they invite no morerisk than a business man in Chicago going to hisoffice, and when their service is ended theUnited States government is obligated to returnthem to Jamaica where for a time their moneywill make them the idols of the markets, lanesand yards. CHAPTER II CRISTOBAL-COLON; AND THE PANAMA RAILROAD. lOLON is the most considerabletown on the Caribbean Coastnorth and west of is in fact two towns,the older one which isstill subject to the juris-diction of the Republicof Panama and which isproperly called Colon;and the new or Americantown which is in theCanal Zone and is called Cristobal. Thetwo are separated only by an imaginary line,though if you want to mail a letter inColon you must use a Panama stamp, whileif you get into trouble—civil or criminal—inthat camp of banditti you will have metedout to you the particular form of justicewhich Panamanian judges keep expressly forunlucky Gringoes who fall into their combined towns are called Cristobal-Colon, or in our vernacular Christopher Co-lumbus. The name is half French, halfSpanish, and the town is a medley of all
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