820 MEXICO. CENTEAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



isthmus of Panama and Mosquito Coast ; in 1885 eighteen sailing-vessels were 

 wrecked by a norte in the port of Colon. 



As in so many other respects, the opposite seaboards present a contrast in the 

 distribution of the rainfall, the northern slopes exposed to the moist trade winds 

 receiving at least twice as much as the Pacific coast facing the southern monsoon ; 

 the former is estimated at over 120, the latter at about 60 inches during the year. 

 At the Gambea observatory, standing 100 feet above sea-level, the average in the 

 rainy season is 38, in the so-called " dry " season 35 inches. 



Beino- almost constantly saturated with vapour and charged with exhalations 

 from the marshy tracts, the hot atmosphere of the isthmus is necessarily danger- 

 ous to Europeans. The first Spanish settlers in Panama gave it the name of 

 SepuUura de Vivos, or " Living Grave." Immigrants from Europe and the United 

 States connected with the railway and canal works have specially to dread affec- 

 tions of the skin, of the liver and kidneys, and yellow fever, during the eight first 

 months of their residence ; after that period of probation they enjoy as much 

 immunity from this scourge as the natives, who suffer most from consumption. 

 Four- fifths of the hands employed on the international works have been half- 

 castes either from Colombia or Jamaica, and when all allowances are made, these 

 works have cost far more lives than similar operations in temperate lands. The 

 mortality during a period of two years and three months in the Panama works 

 amounted to 98 per 1,000. 



Flora and Fauna. 



In the province of Panama, and especially in the isthmus of Darien, the Central 

 American flora reaches its highest development. Here the South Mexican and 

 Colombian types are intermingled and associated with a local flora which, according 

 to Scherzer, represents over one -fifth of the whole. This diversified vegetation 

 covers the surface with such a tangle of stems, branches, foliage, creepers, parasites 

 that the traveller finds his progress blocked in every direction. The headlands 

 along the seaboard nowhere present the aspect of rocky bluffs, being so completely 

 clothed with verdure that they often look like a single gigantic plant with its roots 

 in the deep and its superb pyramidal crest towering to a height of 600 or 700 feet. 



In the interior the brooks and rivers flow beneath sombre avenues of matted 

 foliage, the water disappearing in one place under a mass of drifting snags, in 

 another carpeted with confervals and other aquatic plants. The chamœclorea 

 pacaya, a species of palm, grows to an altitude of 7,000 feet in association with the 

 oak and alder. Owing to the less copious rainfall the vegetation is somewhat less 

 exuberant on the Pacific than on the Atlantic side. 



A remarkable contrast between both coasts is presented by the oceanic fauna, 

 although in the early tertiary epoch the two basins were connected by marine 

 channels. But although the numerous echinidso, for instance, differ specifically, 

 nearly all belong to the same genera on both seaboards. It is evident that the 

 divergence is comparatively recent, and must have taken place since the channels 

 were closed. 



