34 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU 



between the Eockies and the Appalachians, and that the proposed 

 line would extend only as far as from St. Louis to Kansas City, 

 or from Galveston to New Orleans ? 



Even if twenty whites were eager to go where now there is but 

 one reluctant pioneer, we should still have but a halting develop- 

 ment on account of the scarcity of labor. When, three hundred 

 years ago, the Isthmus of Panama stood in his way, Gomara 

 wrote to his king: "There are mountains, but there are also 

 hands," as if men could be conjured up from the tropical jungle. 

 From that day to this the scarcity of labor has been the chief dif- 

 ficulty in the lowland regions of tropical South America. Even 

 when medicine shall have been advanced to the point where resi- 

 dence in the tropics can be made safe, the Amazon basin will lack 

 an adequate supply of workmen. Where Humboldt saw thriving 

 cities, the population is still less than one to the square mile in 

 an area as large as fifteen of our Mississippi Valley states. We 

 hear much about a rich soil and little about intolerable insects; 

 the climate favors a good growth of vegetation, but a man can 

 starve in a tropical forest as easily as in a desert; certain tribu- 

 taries of the Negro are bordered by rich rubber forests, yet not 

 a single Indian hut may be found along their banks. Will men 

 of the white race dig up the rank vegetation, sleep in grass ham- 

 mocks, live in the hot and humid air, or will they stay in the cooler 

 regions of the north and south? Will they rear children in the 

 temperate zones, or bury them in the tropics? 



What Gorgas did for Panama was done for intelligent people. 

 Can it be duplicated in the case of ignorant and stupid laborers? 

 Shall the white man with wits fight it out with Nature in a tropical 

 forest, or fight it out with his equals under better skies ? 



The tropics must be won by strong hands of the lowlier classes 

 who are ignorant or careless of hygiene, and not by the khaki-clad 

 robust young men like those who work at Panama. Tropical medi- 

 cine can do something for these folk, but it cannot do much. And 

 we cannot surround every laborer's cottage with expensive 

 screens, oiled ditches, and well-kept lawns. There is a practical 

 optimism and a sentimental optimism. The one is based on facts ; 



