habitants of a region where there are no industries, and a poor man can gather a week's food in half an hour's walk through the jungle, as on the foreign merchants and traders, particularly the American-owned Panama Railroad. This company organized a police force of its own, called the Isthmus Guard, in 1855, and these fifty or so men, led by Ran Runnels, a Texas ranger, cleared the country of outlaws so thoroughly that in a few months they had abolished their own jobs. But only two years later, a dispute over the price of a slice of watermelon started a riot in which several American travelers were killed and hundreds of others, including many women, terrorized and plundered by the mob, the police and troops making no effort to stop the looting, but, instead, preventing the Americans from defending themselves.
Again and again our intervention was called for, and not always to defend our own people. Ferdinand de Lesseps brought fresh millions for the hungry, and his company was robbed by the local authorities almost as enthusiastically as by its own employees. During the scramble, revolutionists seized and burned Colon, with a great quantity of French canal stores. American marines were landed, restored order, and set the Colombian Humpty Dumpty up on his wall again. This was in 1885, and the successful general who made himself president that year proclaimed a new constitution which deprived Panama of all its rights as a sovereign state, and made it a mere province under the direct control of the federal government at Bogotá. Naturally there was great indignation on the Isthmus, and from
