Can one tell the truth about Panama and return to the Isthmus? That remains to be proven. Much depends on the spirit of the prowler. As well ask whether one can tell the truth about Chicago and be welcome to that metropolis. Probably Chicago would pay no attention to the comment, but Panama might take enough interest to notice.
This is not a guidebook. Heaven forbid! It is merely a few notes of a prowler who found Panama interesting.
CHAPTER I
WHERE THE PROWLING IS GOOD
Panama is the great American curiosity shop. The first city founded by explorers in the New World, the oldest town in America inhabited by white men, the most conglomerate mixture of humanity on earth are in Panama. The bloodiest tale of modern history, the most romantic story of American exploration, the greatest engineering achievement of man all center in Panama.
If there be any interest in congested and sweltering humanity, any concern for the problems of social uplift and personal reaction, Panama is the laboratory for study. The cleanest and healthiest towns on earth are on the Canal Zone, and the last word in shiftlessness and inefficiency is also here. Superstition and science, rascality and rhapsody, efficiency and squalor, graft and honor, all mixed and mingled—this is Panama. Jungle and plain, valley and coast, tropic heat and mountain paradise, fever-swamps and ideal sanitation, engineering success and life in the primitive open—these too are in Panama.
Strange and mysterious traces are still found of the days when the gold of Peru was carried across the Isthmus on pack trains. Later the gold-seekers of California fought their way along the route of the present Canal and found ships on the west coast for the mines of Eldorado. If any survivors still live, they can tell stirring tales of the days when it was well worth a life to carry gold to Aspinwall.
