The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-01-11

| e.ateu naturally, until to-day it occu-
| pies very low plane. In the CITY of
Coion IL lnhabits bungalows reeking
with fifth. built over disease-breedin9
swamps that are perpetually covered
/ with vile green scum. 1t threads its
| way In that city along narrow hoard
walks edging streets that are filled
| with growth of rank vegetation or
| where the streets are over solid
! ground, that are Uttered with refuse
matter of every noxious variety For
! II there are no amusements, no enter
talnhents' the men, after their days
| work about the docks or in the rail
roads service is done, crowd the sa-
looms and gambling houses. For the
| women there is no fate better than
monotonous days passed at lounring
about clad in the thinnest apparel
smoking black cigarettes. leering AT
passersby and minding the children.
who come literally in swarms, and
Who' clad only in their nakedness.
are raised in ignorance, idling away
| the Gays at play in the mud and fifth
of the town, having as companions
! others of their kind, a few NANCY
monkeys, two or three screeching mar
rots or chattering paroquets. and gem
orally a sad-looking specimen of the
flea bitten pig.
Under such circumstances one does
not look for culture or refinement: nor
does one wonder that people die in
TINS feVer-infected land. The wonder
is that conditions are as good as they
are; tnat anybody lives, instead of
that some thousands die every year.
The Interior and at Panama.
In the interior, between Colon and
Panama, and in those parts we'll away
from the railroad, domestic and so
| pllI n nc I'D
In that portion of this republic the
people live in meanly built thathched
novels, or exist as ''squatters'' in the
long-dlsused and decaying canal COM
pany houses. In the villages along
the line of the railroad appear poverty
and squalor in their worst forms, the
people budding together like bees in
a hive, living without thought of hy-
glene or sanitation and in homes so
squalid that 1t is a safe assertion that
the meanest negro in the most be-
| nighted section of our own land would
not spend day amid such surround
ings.
In Panama conditions are no better.
Panama "a famed city, a worlds capt.
tai and the isthmian metropohs) is a
tumble of soft yellow stone, adobe and
frame houses; of cobblestone streets of
ruined churches and of oVercrowded
and narrow, and the houses are built
flush with the sidewalk line. In all
the city there is no such thing as a
sewerage system. But three buildings
in the place boast the luxury of run
ming water The only gardens, aside
from the few public plazas, are en-
! joyed by those who have built LEAN
to" shanties within the ruins that
abound ON every hand, and there es-
tablished their domiciles. The chill
| dren-and here, as in Colon, they come
in swarms-live in the streets, breath
ing the noXious odors that constantly
fill the air, and that are caused by the
free dumping upon the thoroughfares
of garbage and fecal matter, which lies
to be beaten up by the rains, baked
by the torrid sun and to send its nau-
seating odors and disease breeding
i germs outward through twenty-four
Il hours of the day. Here, as in Colon,
the passerby encounters indecently
CARRIED women, naked babies, dense
clouds of bugs, whole f1ocks of insinu
ating turkey buzzards and, inevitably,
the NANCY monkey, the chattering
birds and the flea-bitten pigs.
How this population lives is a mys-
terry. In Colon it draws it sustenance
through the railroad, the money paid
out by that institution sufficing to pro-
vide the few clothes it wears and to
enable it to purchase the limited as
sortment of edibles it consumes. In
Panama the railroad, with it's allied
steamship interests, a desultory inter-
est in the fishing industry and some
little cOastwise trading, furnishes it
the means for livelihood, but in the
interior, since the stoppage of canal
work, there has been practically moth
ing to which the inhabitant could turn
his hand. And yet they manage to
live. The marketing of wild bananas
and oranges, the gathering of bamboo
and sugar cane, afford them a little,
very little, cash. For the rest they
go to the soil or the rivers and forests,
where yuccas, yams, fish and birds are
to be found in abundance. Iguanas
an exaggerated specie of the lizard,
provides them with meat; pigs thrive
in spite of the 1eas and the mango, and
! they exc out an existence which would
kill a white man in months time,
but under which they seem to take on
flesh and to be able to utterly refute
any and all suggestions of race sui
eide"
COncubinage, Not Marriage.
Among this native population the
marriage relation is little thought Of
The institution of matrimony in this
| land is controlled by the church. and
| the eApeIlSeS VI Il WcuulilS
are so far beyond the reach of the
average native that the people seldom
bother about marrying. The home life
of the ninety-and-n is, therefore.
system of concubinage. and a close
view of that system leads to the con-
clusion that it is concubinage~ in its
worst form. Instead of marrying men
and women join hand and go off to live
| together and to raise their family. If,
as sometimes happens, they can save
enough money to defray the expenses
of a wedding ceremony, they may at
some future date be legally married,
but even marriages of this class are
exceptional.
of Colon not long ago, however, and
gala occasion it was. The bride and
groom were the BLACKLIST of the black
natives, They had been living as man
and wife for nobody knew exactly how
| long when good fortune befel them,
and they concluded to be married. The
native population thronged the little
church to see the sight; there was a
grand display of gaudy colors. and the
crowd rejoiced with an exceeding great
Joy when bride and groom marched
solemnly up the aisle attended by their
seven children, all born out of wedlock
That was a day to be remembered in
the native quarter, and accounts of the
dissipation that marked the celebration
of that legal union are still vivid in
the recital.
Inexcusable as this system of concu-
Image is on general principles, It has