Yellow Fever.
THE cities of Colon and Panama have never been particularly unhealthy to the Panamanian born, whether white or coloured, or to the West Indian stranger.
This population has merely been subject to the malaria common to equatorial towns, especially when in the neighbourhood of swamps, and to the evils which attend imperfect sanitation in a hot climate.
The intervening country is very malarious in the low-lying parts, less so on the hilly divide, differing in no way from other similar localities in the same latitude.
READING ROOM, EMPLOYEES' CLUB, CULEBRA.
HALL OF EMPLOYEES' CLUB, CULEBRA.
The reputation of the Isthmus of Panama as a death-trap is due to the sickness which (previous to 1906) has always been prevalent among white strangers, and most other visitors, and particularly to the high percentage of death from yellow fever. To this short, sharp, and most deadly disease the native-born is immune; hence the affairs of the city of Panama have gone on well enough for centuries, as far as the residents are concerned, except that travellers by the Isthmian route tarried no longer than they could help. Whenever large numbers of strangers have congregated on the Isthmus, as during the Californian gold-rush, the construction of the railway, and the Canal construction of the French Companies, there has been an epidemic of yellow fever among them, and a very large proportion of cases have terminated fatally.