The way in which sanitary instruction may be made efficient is illustrated among some of the people of Panama. Upon one occasion the Canal Record carried a small diagram of how to make a sanitary drinking cup out of a sheet of paper. After that there were many Panamans who, although in a hundred ways indifferent to contagion, would no longer drink from common drinking cups, but would make their own sanitary cups. Even the Jamaican negroes employed around the offices of the commission in many instances would not think of using the common drinking glass at the office water-cooler.
Two tribes of Indians on the Isthmus have not mixed with the Caucasians or the negroes. They are the Chucunoques and the San Blas Indians. The latter tribe has never been known to allow a white man to remain in its territory after sundown. Even the higher officials of the Panaman Government are forced to respect this tradition when they treat with the San Blas chiefs.
Government land in Panama can be bought at the rate of $49.60 for 247 acres, with reductions for larger areas. The Government invites foreign capital, declaring that the United States stands as a perpetual guarantee against revolutions within and aggressions without.
The story of the early days in Panaman history is a strange admixture of romance and cruelty. The Isthmus was discovered in 1500, and first settled by an adventurer who had been the Royal Carver in the king's household at Madrid. Balboa, carrying with him a small force of men and a lot of bloodhounds, one of them a dog of mighty prowess, known as Lioncico, or "Little Lion," which drew a captain's pay because of its fighting qualities, crossed the Isthmus in 1513 and discovered the Pacific Ocean. After him came a new governor of the Isthmus, who put Balboa to death.
The Spaniards were unspeakably cruel to the Indians. Even those who received them kindly were tortured and roasted to death, because they did not produce enough gold. One governor rode a mule, which was noted for the frequency of its braying. The Indians were taught that the mule was asking for gold, and in meeting these demands they not only had to give what they possessed, but were forced to rob the graves of their ancestors as well. Upon one occasion the Indians, having captured a number of Spaniards, melted a lot of the yellow metal and poured it down their throats, telling them to drink until their thirst for gold was quenched.
After the Spaniards had established themselves upon the Isthmus, the English buccaneers, Drake and Morgan, fell upon their cities and despoiled them. The ruins at Old Panama, which once was a city of 30,000 inhabitants, to-day tell the story of the effective work of Henry Morgan when he raided it and captured its treasure.
While the Spanish conquerors, the French filibusters, and the English buccaneers, who took their turns in pillaging Panama, were cruel beyond imagination, they were always famous for their outward evidences of religion and piety. The Spanish were always chanting hymns and honoring the saints; the French would shoot down their own soldiers for irreverent behavior during mass; the English pirate captains never failed to hold divine services on Sunday, and often prohibited profanity and gambling.
Where once Spaniards tortured Indians and British buccaneers raided Spaniards, where once revolution after revolution left a poor and desolate country, to-day the gates of Panama are open to the world, and its trade is invited again to pass that way. The people of the Isthmus believe that the glory which departed when Morgan sacked Old Panama, forcing the Pacific trade to seek the Strait of Magellan, will return with the opening of the Panama Canal, and that their capital, whose walls cost so much that the Spanish king thought he could see them from his chamber window in Madrid, will retrieve its ancient glory.