FLASHLIGHT OF A PIG-LIKE CREATURE: THE LONG, NAKED TAIL, HOWEVER, SHOWS 
IT TO BE A SPECIES OF PANAMA OPOSSUM 
‘Therefore any infected drainage carry- 
ing typhoid, tuberculosis, and other wa- 
ter-borne diseases, productive of fevers 
or intestinal disorders, should be rigor- 
ously controlled. Yet this is impossible 
if scattered habitations and native villages 
occupy any considerable portion of the 
amphitheater of hills about the lake basin. 
DANGEROUS TO SHIPPING 
More serious, however, than the im- 
pairment of this great body of water for 
domestic uses will be the ever-increasing 
influx of mosquitoes, heretofore sup- 
pressed by the activity of the health au- 
thorities. The difference between drain- 
ing or spraying local swamps and _ stag- 
nant pools along an unfilled canal, with 
the easy enforcement of health regula- 
tions among the employees, and that of 
effectively controlling the inception and 
spread of mosquitoes in the more than 
160 square miles of tepid waters, sur- 
rounded by ignorant and uncontrollable 
natives, is too apparent for argument. 
While the deeper waters and those in 
which small fish have ready access may 
not be any great source of trouble, yet 
the myriad of swamps and pools, the 
thousands of water-holes in shore de- 
pressions or creek bottoms, will afford a 
breeding place, and the jungle a refuge, 
for an army of yellow fever and malarial 
mosquitoes. Imagine what will follow 
the relocation of native villages in the 
neighborhood of these shallow and shel- 
tered waters. 
Wherever we went about the shores 
mosquitoes were fairly abundant in the 
daytime and very numerous at dusk or 
thereafter. On the several occasions that 
we boarded a train in the evening at 
smaller stations adjacent to the lake we 
noticed the great abundance of mos- 
quitoes, and especially that of the anoph- 
eles variety—the carrier of malaria. 
These back-woods stations seem to be 
the gathering place in the evening of all 
the neighboring population, and as the 
cars are unscreened and the windows 
continuously open, it is easy to see how, 
in case an epidemic starts at such points, 
infected mosquitoes will be quickly and 
continuously conveyed to the large cities 
at cither end of the route. Under such 
conditions, too, the slow passage of steam- 
ships by the swampy shores of the lake at 
all hours of the day and night will invite 
188 
