FROM ANCON TO THE ISLAND 27 



Nearly all the way from Panama we had come 

 through high hills. Along the railroad they have 

 been cleared of the heavy jungle bush, and herds 

 of cattle graze over them just as they do in the 

 dairy country of the United States. Corozo 

 palms and the great leaves of banana plants have 

 sometimes reminded me that I was still in the 

 tropics. 



Halfway across the Zone you will find, if you 

 have been following us on the map, our station, 

 Frijoles, which we reached after an hour's travel. 

 Frijoles, if you are interested, means just "beans." 

 But it is not beans for which the tiny negro 

 village is noted, but its bananas, which are the 

 finest in the country. The gold of bananas is 

 now the gold of Panama, for which fortune 

 hunters toil. 



A huge dugout canoe, piled high with green 

 bunches of bananas, now lay at the . rickety 

 wharf, waiting to be unloaded into one of the 

 empty freight cars standing on the railway siding. 

 We looked at the load with interest, knowing from 

 past experience that if a bunch among them had 

 begun to turn yellow we might have it for the 

 asking. Bananas ripen so fast that only the 

 green ones will not spoil in the ten days between 

 Frijoles and New York. 



On the cinder platform waited John English 

 (Fig. 12), the friendly and intelHgent negro who 

 helped me to find workmen when he was not busy 



