The Commission clubs for gold-employees at the principal stations are commodious structures, admirably designed for social recreation; their management is entrusted to the Young Men's Christian Association. There are well-equipped reading and writing rooms and gymnasia, mainly used by the men, but the interests of the women and children are not neglected, and for the last playrooms are provided. The large halls are used for entertainments and for meetings of the numerous benevolent "secret" societies which have been so important a factor in the preliminary organisation of American society in newly settled territories. In the clubs only "soft" drinks are provided, but I can testify to their excellent effects.
The question whether the white race can make a home in the tropics depends ultimately upon the tropical baby—upon his own health and that of his mother. The American occupation is still recent, but as far as experience goes it seems that the white children born on the Isthmus have not shown unusual delicacy, and the mothers have made a normal, though sometimes rather slow, recovery from confinement.
The views of Colonel Gorgas upon the future of the white race in the tropics deserve quotation. He writes[31]:—
"I think the sanitarian can now show that any population coming into the tropics can protect itself against these two diseases [malaria and yellow fever] by measures that are both simple and inexpensive; that with these two diseases eliminated life in the tropics for the Anglo-Saxon will be more healthful than in the temperate zones; that gradually, within the next two or three centuries, tropical countries, which offer a much greater return for man's labour than do the temperate zones, will be settled up by the white races, and that again the centres of wealth, civilisation and population will be in the tropics, as they were in the dawn of man's history, rather than in the temperate zone, as at present."
[31] "Sanitation in the Canal Zone."
In this connection I may perhaps be permitted to refer to an interesting suggestion made in the course of conversation by Colonel Gorgas, although I omitted to inquire if it had been published. This suggestion was that the records of the movements of great armies under the rulers of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt indicate that malaria did not then exist in the nearer East, and that malaria, like yellow fever, was once a local disease.
NEAR THE SITE OF MILAFLORES LOCKS.
LOOKING NORTH TO CULEBRA DIVIDE FROM ANCON HILL.