The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-11-19

1 ani jaguars and wild beasts innumber-
 able. There are no roads. only mule trails, and every man must be his own policeman. There are no railroads in
 the districts immediately about the isthmus. and the only highways are the rivers. These have abundant water
 the year around, for in the Attra coun- try the rainfall is 400 inches in the year. The low lands about this river and the SiDU, which is the great water highway little further east, are splen- did grazing land, and the cattle ranches during the years that the government is fairly stable accumlate vast herds of fine cattle. Bananas are the staple feod of the country, eaten roasted, boiled, fried and dried, and made into four. Of .his flour the people make a very nourishing and palatable bread, baked in long rolls, not in the shape,
 but after the manner of Mexican tor tilla. Ali sorts of tropical products Of great value grow wild there-rubber,
 vanilla, c;lcao and coffee-yet such is the improvidenee of the people and tEe uncertainty of political conditions that they are little worked. The mountain lands, toe, are unquestionably rich in gold, silver. valuable minerals and coal.
 These should be vast wealth producers,
 under proper conditions of thrift and
 stable government, but are practically
 unworked at the present time.
 F. c. Nicholas, in Across Panama. " already quoted, gives a reversed and discriminating study of the couatry's
 possibilities of development. T found,
 he says, "at Panama a rich country,
 whose agricultural opportunities are attractive and mineral wealth is abund-
 ant. Panama is reputed the most unl
 healthy of all places in the American
 tropics, natural inference because
 the route of travel has sought the low est divide for the crossing of the isth-
 mus, and low lands in the tropics are
 unhealthy; particularly where there are swamps. as at Colon, and great ex- posures of marine drift when the tide falls, as at Panama City But after leaving the depressions between the two seaports, one finds better country
 where the lands are rich and the cli-
 mate reasonably favorable. The Chiri- qui lagoon is health resort, ana among the interior mountains have found many desirable regions. Among
 the mountains the air is temperate and all the surroundings delightful In the
 deep valleys there is intense heat and poisoned air On the coastal plains, wherever there is good drainage and an
 open sweep of the trade winds the eli-
 mate is delightful and the lands are de- sirable. Tn the swamps no man can live.
 Tn the northern portions of the isth- mus there are mountains of consider
 able elevation. Southward these grad tally subside to the central Impressions where the canal Is being seriously con-
 sidered.> Farther south the mountains rise again and become very prominent.
 If the canal goes to Panama, the isth-
 mmus will enjoy some years of active
 construction, with large expenditures of
 money, followed by a great commer- cial movement Lands along the cen- tral depression are good and fertile, but the climate is undesirable. To the
 south, the inhospitable San Bias Indi- ans are a dangerous element, so it ap- pears that the lands most desirable for foreigners are in the northeastern part Of the isthmus and that Boeus del Toro and the Chiriqui lagoon regions will be , the places from which supplies to feed the canal laborers will be principally drawn.
 "Of all that saw in northeastern i Panama, the primeval tropical forests at the base of the mountains were most | impressive. There one steps from a canoe to the shore, pushes aside rank
 growth of reeds and plants, struggles through them for little distance, reaches a wall of green foliage, lifts an overhanging bough, scrambles under and-the world shut out-stands in shadow-land and silence. Strange, dim butterflies go wavering in and out
 among a dense growth of ferns and tender plants which could not endure the sun, giant trees form as it were columns for an expansive roof of green, and everywhere the gray trunks of slender trees reach upward until their
 branches find the sunlight far above, and their naked stems seems like a slender tracery pendent from the upper
 roof of green A tangled, mattered