FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 243 



when surfeited, cannot realise the nostalgia of the 

 exile. Those who have smelt the tropics under 

 other skies guess at the darker hidden side of all 

 this hothouse pageantry of the equatorial jungle, 

 and are glad enough to make the Isthmian transit 

 asleep and behind drawn blinds. 



Panama, for all its pleasing outlook (at high 

 tide) over the great western ocean that is to mean 

 so much in the future greatness of America, is not 

 noticeable for either streets or public buildings. 

 Its most beautiful suburb is Ancon, where, on 

 gentle hills within the Zone, stands the famous 

 hospital, a legacy of the French occupation ably 

 and conscientiously administered by their suc- 

 cessors. Here, in what is perhaps without excep- 

 tion the most perfect tropical sanatorium in exist- 

 ence, as well as in smaller affiliated hospitals and 

 dispensaries at Culebra, Empire, Miraflores and 

 other points on the Isthmus, Colonel Gorgas and 

 his staff have charge of the health of twenty or 

 thirty thousand residents, most of them the 

 coloured employe's of the Commission. Malaria 

 and pneumonia, the latter very prevalent among 

 the negroes from the islands, are the chief troubles 

 that have to be dealt with ; but of yellow fever, the 

 epidemic which carelessly-informed persons continue 

 to associate with the Isthmus, cases have for a long 

 while been so rare that a suspect, whom I saw in 

 one of the wards, through which I went with Colonel 

 Gorgas, was engaging the concentrated attention 

 of half the staff. In addition to ordinary hospital 

 work, the Americans are busy cleaning up this 

 unclean corner of earth and ridding the settled 

 portions of Anopheles and Stegomyia, which have 



