quito was vigorously carried on in the face of protests by the beneficiaries, who seemed to consider the risk of yellow fever preferable to the discomfort of fumigation. Excellent water supplies were instituted, and all uncovered receptacles for water were thereafter forbidden. The streets of Colon and Panama were paved, and much of the Island of Manzanillo was filled in and drained. An adequate sewer system has been installed in each city, and a good fire department is now established in Panama. Only those who knew these cities at the time of the French occupation can fully appreciate the wonderful transformation that has been effected in them.

In a public address, delivered in August, 1909, Mr. H. H. Rousseau of the Isthmian Canal Commission thus summed up the work of the Sanitary Department:

"The work of the Sanitary Department, under the member of the Commission who has been its head since its organization, has been phenomenally successful, and, by removing the Icloud which rested over the Isthmus from its unsanitary and extremely unhealthful condition, and thus making it possible for Americans to live and work there in health and happiness,

it has performed a service of inestimable value toward the construction of the Canal. The present condition has been reached only by persevering hard work. There have been 135 cases but since 1905, nearly four years ago, not a case of yellow fever among employes and 34 deaths, has been known. Similar success has attended the fight against malaria. In 1904, threefourths of the Zone population were infected with malaria, and in the early days of Canal construction the number of employes treated for malaria in hospitals in a year averaged over 80 per cent of the whole number. It is scarcely one-third of this at present. In the last three years the hotel sick rate of employes has been reduced more than one-half, and the death rate more than two-thirds.

"Over 1,200 men are carried on the pay rolls of the Department of Sanitation, and the expenditures amount to $2,000,000 per annum. It will require constant work and unceasing vigilance to keep health conditions up to the standard which has been established. The total expenses of the Sanitary Department will amount, it is estimated, to about $20,000,000, or a little over 5 per cent of the total cost of the

Canal. Of the total expenditures of the French, less than $2,000,000, or hardly one-half of one per cent, was charged up to hospital service, and practically nothing to sanitation."

CHAPTER IX

ALONG THE LINE OF THE CANAL

AT the time that the Panama Railroad operation was inaugurated, the Island of Manzanillo was wilderness, inhabited upon its edges by a few Indians. It was here that the Railroad Company decided to locate its Atlantic terminal. A worse choice could hardly have been made, but no doubt there was good reason at the time for the selection of the site. The town, which grew up on the seashore, was called Aspinwall by the Americans, after one of the promoters of the railway enterprise. The Colombian Government, however, named it Colon. The island is a coral formation covered with sand. Its length is less than a mile and its breadth about six hundred yards. The railroad embankment connects it with the mainland. The town was originally built without any regard to order or convenience. The railroad sheds

and shops, and the laborers' shacks, were scat

tered about promiscuously. As no trees grow upon the island, with the exception of a few wind blown palms on the beach, the site of the town has always been bare and exposed to the full force of the sun's rays.

In the early part of 1885, a revolution broke out in the interior of Colombia. A body of the insurgents threatened the city of Panama, and General Gonima, the officer in charge of a small detachment of national troops at Colon, was ordered to transfer his force, together with the entire police of the town, to the other end of the Isthmus, for the purpose of aiding the defence. Before leaving, General Gonima requested Commander Kane of the United States ship Galena, then anchored in the harbor, to afford protection to Colon. It is claimed, with apparent truth, that the naval officer undertook the responsibility. Whether he did so or not, his later action, or rather lack of action, is inexplicable.

No sooner had the Colombian troops and the police left Colon, than one Pedro Prestan gathered about him a gang of ruffians, seized the Prefectura, collected all the arms procurable, and instituted a reign of terror. Many outrages were committed on American citizens, but