the numerous slides have led to the abandonment of that design and the road is carried round through the foot hills. The total cost of the new line will be about nine million dollars.

The Canal bill provides for the treatment of the Panama Railroad, at present a separate interest, as a complementary accessory to the Canal, and its adaptation to any military necessities that may arise.

Balboa will be the chief future point in the Canal. It is situated at the Pacific mouth of it and has already extensive docks, machine shops, and other buildings. Here will be the headquarters of the Canal and the principal entrepot of its traffic. There is no doubt but that Balboa will grow into a town of large proportions, and there are not a few, conversant with the situation and prospects, who entertain the opinion that Balboa will grow at the expense of Panama. It must become a great commercial centre and point of transhipment.

It may be well to remind the reader that the cities of Colon and Panama, although geographically within the Canal Zone, were excluded from the lease of that territory to the United States and remain in the possession

and under the jurisdiction of the Republic of Panama. The United States has by treaty agreement certain conditional control over the cities in question in the matters of order and sanitation.

CHAPTER XII

PROGRESS IN PANAMA

PROGRESS is hardly the proper word to apply to the movement in the Republic since the first edition of this work was published. Aside from the extent to which it has been carried along by the advance of the Canal operation, the country has made no progress, nor have its people availed themselves in anything like the degree possible of the opportunities that have been created by the development of the American enterprise.

That the country is susceptible of splendid development is beyond question, but whether it will take place or not must, of course, depend upon the people, and they are not at present headed in the right direction, nor possessed of the degree of interest and purpose that the situation demands. In the interior the people have no ambition beyond the needs and pleasures of the immediate morrow. The masses