38 
CALIFORNIA ILLUSTRATED. 
Lis door. It seems a paradise. It would seem that man might 
be happy here. He has not to care for to-morrow, but to par¬ 
take of the bounties of nature as they are presented. But, 
alas! man spends his life struggling for the thousand phantasies 
his own diseased imagination has engendered, while nature 
has placed happiness within his reach, and only asks content¬ 
ment on the part of the recipient of her bounties. 
The markets of Panama, as well as the retail trade in 
other departments, are under the supervision of females. They 
are generally well supplied with every variety of fruit from 
the islands, together with eggs, fowls, &c. The beef and pork 
are sold by the yard. Beef is cut in thin strips and dried in 
the sun; this is packed or sewed up in skins, and is an article 
of export from many of the South American Republics. The 
inhabitants have a great passion for “fighting-cocks.” There 
is not a house that is not furnished with from one to a dozen. 
They generally occupy the best aparments, and, on entering 
a house, your first salutation is from “chanticleer,” he having 
a strange propensity to do the loud talking. They also 
venerate the turkey-buzzard, with which the city is sometimes 
clouded. They are the carrion bird of the south, and no 
doubt good in their place, but the most loathsome of all the 
feathered tribe. 
The citizens of Panama, as well as of other tropical countries, 
have the happy faculty of devoting most of their time to the 
pursuit of pleasure, i.e., they divide time between business and 
pleasure, giving to the latter a great predominance. Before 
the innovations made by “los Americanos,” stores were open 
from 9 to 10 A. m:., and 4 to 5 P. M., the balance of the day 
was spent in smoking, drinking coffee, chocolate, or cocoa, gam¬ 
bling, cock-fighting, attending church, or wooing sleep in ham¬ 
mocks. The city is generally healthy, yet at some seasons of 
the year, is subject to fevers of a malignant type. It has been 
visited several times by that scourge the cholera, which swept 
off many of its inhabitants, and, at one time, seemed destined 
to depopulate the country. The priests clad themselves in 
sackcloth, and devoted every moment to the rites of the church, 
burning incense and invoking the patron saint of the city to 
stay the ravages of the disease. The vaults in which the dead 
