While the Americans have done so much for public cleanliness in Panama and Colon, the masses seem to know little more about sanitary living today than before the Americans came. The stenches which greet the visitor in the native quarters are no less odorous than those encountered in other cities of tropical America. The bathtub is an unknown quantity among the masses. Most of the natives who live in the cities are engaged in some line of small trade. It may be that a shop has only a platter of sweetmeats and a few bottles of soda on ice, and that another has only a bushel of different kinds of tropical fruits, but out of the small sales large families manage in some way to exist. The markets open early in the morning. There is no spirit of rivalry among the market men, and they act usually as if they were conferring a favor upon the buyer. At the markets many Indians are encountered who bring their wares from the interior and offer them for sale. These usually consist of pottery, net bags, charcoal and the like.
Life among the Panamans in the jungle is simple indeed. With his machete the householder may provide a thatched roof for his mud-floored hut, and he can raise enough beans, plantains and yams, and burn enough charcoal, and catch enough fish to meet all of his needs. In the kitchen the principal utensils are gourds and cocoanut shells. The most tempting morsel that the Panaman can get is the iguana, a lizard as big as a cat, whose meat is said to taste like spring chicken. It is about the ugliest creature in the animal world, and yet it means more to the native Panaman than does possum meat to the cotton-field darky of the South.
The unconscious cruelty of the average native is remarked by almost every visitor. He is usually too lazy to be conscious of cruelty, for that would require exertion. When he catches the iguana, for instance, he takes it alive so that it may be fattened before being killed. Its short legs are twisted and crossed above its back, and the sharp claw of one foot is thrust through the fleshy part of the other, so as to hold them together without other fastening. The tail, being useless for food, is chopped off with the machete, and thus mutilated and unable to move, the lizard is kept captive until fat enough to eat.
The fruits of Panama are neither so numerous nor so plentiful as those of Nicaragua or Jamaica. The mamei is a curious pulpy fruit the size of a peach, with a skin like chamois and with a smooth pit the size of a peach-stone. The sapodilla is a plum-colored fruit with seeds in a gelatinous mass. One is usually introduced to the sapodilla with the remark that, although the seeds are eaten, they have never been known to cause appendicitis.
Cedar is preferred to mahogany in Panama. The Indians make their cayucas out of mahogany logs, and it is not uncommon to see bridges 40 feet long and 5 feet thick, made of mahogany logs which would be worth several thousands of dollars in an American furniture factory.
Panama is famous for its tropical flowers. Many of them are beautiful, but few are sweet smelling. Orchids abound, especially on the Atlantic side, and while the waters of the Chagres were being impounded in Gatun Lake, native boatmen would go out in their cayucas and gather orchids from the trees. One of the most beautiful of the orchids of Panama is the Holy Ghost orchid. It blooms biennially, and when its petals fold back they reveal a likeness to a dove.
Some of the American Women on the Canal Zone became enthusiastic collectors of tropical flowers. Among these were Mrs. David Du Bose Gaillard and Mrs. Harry Harwood Rousseau. Both of these ladies spent much time hunting orchids and other flowers for the verandas of their houses and for their gardens. Mrs. Rousseau made trips into several of the other countries of Central America in her quest for new orchids. The collections made by these two ladies represent the finest on the whole Isthmus of Panama.
The animal life of the Isthmus is not abundant, although some deer and a few tapirs are to be found. Alligators abound in the Chagres River and other streams of the Zone. Perhaps the most interesting form of animal life to be found on the Isthmus is the leaf-cutting ant. This ant seems to be nature's original fungus grower. As one walks around the American settlements, he frequently comes upon a long path filled with ants, passing back and forth. They resemble a sort of miniature yacht under full sail, except that the sails are green instead of white. Upon closer examination it is found that what seemed to be a sail is a triangular piece of leaf carried on the back of the ant, with its edges to the wind so as to overcome air resistance. The ants do not gather these leaves for food, but they store them in such a way that a fungus grows upon them. They eat the fungus, and when the leaves are no longer useful they are thrown out and new supplies brought in.
The native remedies used by the Panamans are many and interesting. For stomach troubles, which are very rare, they eat papaya. The papaya is a sort of fruit which might be a cross between a cantaloupe, a watermelon and a pumpkin, except that it grows on trees. It has the rind of a green pumpkin, the meat of a cantaloupe, and the seeds of a watermelon. It is probably richer in vegetable pepsin than any other plant in existence—a pepsin which neutralizes either alkaline or acid conditions in the stomach. It is said that a tough steak, wrapped in the leaf of the papaya tree overnight, becomes tender as the result of the digestive action of the pepsin in it.
The Indians and Panamans who live in the jungle use the wood of the cacique, or "monkey cocoanut," to stop any flow of blood. In their materia medica they have a large number of tropical plants which they use for their ailments.