ILLUSTRATIONS
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| The Faithful Mule is the Ship of the Jungle | [14] |
| The Homeward Way at Nightfall | [15] |
| An Empire in the Making | [19] |
| A Few Good Roads on the Zone | [21] |
| Church at Nata, Oldest Inhabited Town in New World, Founded 1520 | [24] |
| The Jungle is the Place for Picnics | [27] |
| Even Farm Cabins Are Picturesque in Costa Rica | [30] |
| Ruins of Old Panama, the Most Romantic Spot in the New World | [33] |
| Indian Woman at the Fountain | [36] |
| Baths—Wholesale and Retail | [43] |
| Convent Door | [46] |
| Official Lottery in Bishop's House, Panama | [48] |
| Ruin of Famous Flat-Arch Church | [52] |
| Eighth-Grade Room, Panama | [53] |
| Convent Garden | [56] |
| Romantic Old Convents Survive | [58] |
| Ruined Tower at Old Panama | [60] |
| Costa Rica Trapiche, or Sugar Mill | [62] |
| Papaya Trees | [66] |
| Bananas and Sugar Cane | [68] |
| Cacao Pods | [70] |
| Proposed Location for Rest Cure | [73] |
| Picturesque Jungle Towns | [78] |
| Tortillas are Staple | [80] |
| Jungle Folk | [81] |
| "The Cotter's Saturday Night" | [82] |
| Church Bells of Arraijan, Cast 1722 | [85] |
| First-Grade Room, Panama | [89] |
| The Beautiful Savanas of Costa Rica | [95] |
| Shipping Costa Rica Vegetables to Panama | [99] |
| Good Pineapples Grow Here | [103] |
| Dead Timber in Gatun Lake Now Covered with Orchids | [105] |
| Interior Meat Market | [111] |
| The Flavor of Old Spain | [112] |
| Taking the Rest Cure | [113] |
| The Oxen Stage of Agriculture | [115] |
| Wayside Sellers of Fruit | [117] |
| The House Beside the Road | [118] |
| Wireless at Darien | [123] |
| Farm Grist Mill, Costa Rica | [126] |
| Happy Kindergartners, Panama | [129] |
| Young Costa Rica is Enterprising | [131] |
| Wooden Sugar Mill and Its Maker | [133] |
| Public Market, David | [137] |
| Indian Boy Goes to School | [145] |
| Washday in Costa Rica | [147] |
| Riverside Plantation | [151] |
| Jungle Products | [154] |
| San Blas Indian Chief | [161] |
| No Race Suicide Here | [162] |
| Jungle Guide | [164] |
| One Use for a Head | [165] |
| Beggars and Cathedrals | [167] |
| Far from the Madding Crowd | [169] |
| Seawall Church and School, Panama | [171] |
| Mandy Did Her Share | [173] |
| The Canal Digger | [173] |
| The Town Pump, Interior Village | [175] |
| Wayside Cemetery in the Jungle | [176] |
| Coconuts—So Good and So High | [180] |
| Boiling "Dulce"—Crude Sugar | [183] |
| Washing by the River | [189] |
| Costa Rica Farm House | [194] |
| Bananas Thirty Feet High | [197] |
| San Blas Indians Have "Poker Faces" | [198] |
| Where Styles Molest No More | [201] |
| Chinese Always Start a School | [205] |
| "Schooldays" | [205] |
| Three in a Row | [212] |
| Mother, Home, and—the Simple Life | [212] |
| Construction Days in Culebra-Gailard Cut | [217] |
| Gatun Spillway, Key to the Canal | [224] |
| Cristobal Streets | [227] |
| Fat Cattle of Coclé | [228] |
| Enchanted Islands in Gatun Lake | [231] |
| Panama Public Water Works, Interior Country | [237] |
| A Jungle Cathedral | [242] |
| Shoe-bills Are Small | [248] |
FOREWORD
The fine art of prowling may be achieved, but is more often a gift of those to the manner born. Professional globe-trotters are not prowlers. They are often the victims of their own sense of superiority. Personally conducted tours are little help to real prowling, and professional guides reduce the sight-seer to a machine for receiving "canned" information with gaping mouth, while with his free hand he extracts tips from his reluctant pocket.
Prowling is an instinct, a sixth sense of locations and values. The prowler must have intuition and imagination and perseverance and historical perspective, but with these he must have something else—that inner vision that finds values in everything human. The expert explorer will find something interesting in Sahara, but almost any prowler will have a rare time in Panama.
Probably no spot in the New World has served as the location of so many kinds of events and interests as this narrow neck of land between two continents. Brief histories of it have been well written, and the visitor should by all means read at least one of them. It remains for some seer yet to tell worthily the story of the four centuries that link the last discovery of the world's greatest explorer with the final achievement of the world's most skillful builders.
Panama furnishes an epitome of history. Nearly everything that has ever happened anywhere in the world has had some counterpart or parallel in Panama, and of the coming results of the new forces now released on the Isthmus time alone can be the measure.
This book makes no claims to consistency. Where contradictory characteristics abound and motives are much mixed, both sides may be faithfully set forth, but to reconcile them is a difficult matter. There will be no unified and consistent life on the Isthmus until the advancing civilization now there outgrows some of its present traits.