Photo by F. A Gause
CHIRIQUI CATTLE AT THE ABATTOIR
Often, however, the apartments reached by such uninviting gateways are charming. The rooms are always big, equivalent each to about three rooms of our typical city flat. Great French windows open to the floor, and give upon broad verandas, from which the life of the street below may be observed—incidentally letting in the street noises which are many and varied. The tendency is to the minimum of furniture, and that light, so as to admit easy shifting to the breeziest spots. To our northern eyes the adjective “bare” would generally apply to these homes, but their furnishings are adapted to the climate and to the habits of people living largely out of doors. Rents are high for a town of 35,000 people. A five-room flat in a fairly good neighborhood will rent for from $60 to $75 gold a month, and as the construction is of the simplest and the landlord furnishes neither heat nor janitor service, it seems a heavy return on the capital invested.
THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE; A FINE TYPE OF PANAMA RESIDENCE
It seemed to me, as the result of questioning and observation rather than by any personal experience, that living expenses in Panama City must be high, and good living according to our North American ideas impossible. What the visitor finds in the homes of the people on the Canal Zone offers no guide to the conditions existing in the native town. For the Zone dwellers have the commissary to buy from, and that draws from all the markets of the world, and is particularly efficient in buying meats, which it gets from our own Beef Trust and sells for about half of what the market man in Chicago or New York exacts. But the native Panamanian has no such source of supply. His meats are mainly native animals fresh killed, and if you have a taste for sanguinary sights you may see at early dawn every morning numbers of cattle and hogs slaughtered in a trim and cleanly open air abattoir which the Panamanians owe to the Canal authorities. However the climate tends to encourage a fish and vegetable diet, and the supplies of these staples are fairly good. The family buying is done at a central market which it is well worth the tourists’ time to visit.
Photo by Gause
THE FISH MARKET
Every day is market day at Panama, but the crowded little open-air mart is seen at its best of a Saturday or Sunday in the early morning. All night long the native boats, mostly cayucas hewn out of a single log and often as much as 35 feet long, and with a schooner rig, have been drifting in, propelled by the never-failing trade wind. They come from the Bayano River country, from Chorrera, from Taboga and the Isles of Pearls, from the Bay of San Miguel and from the land of the San Blas Indians. Great sailors these latter, veritable vikings of the tropics, driving their cayucas through shrieking gales when the ocean steamers find it prudent to stay in port.