States, by the treaty of 1846, obtained from New Granada the perpetual right of transit for its citizens across the Isthmus of Panama, promising in return both to maintain the neutrality of any trade-routes that might be built there, and to guard the local government against attack by any foreign power. And ever since the making of this treaty and the building of the Panama Railroad, the Isthmus has been kept alive by American business and kept more or less peaceful by American ships and guns.
Left to itself, the Isthmus would have been anything but peaceful. In the fifty-seven years between the treaty of 1846 and the final revolution in 1903, there were at least fifty-three disturbances and outbreaks, beginning with a riot in which two Americans were killed, and ending with a civil war nearly three years long. Six times our warships had to clear for action and land sailors and marines to protect life and property, and at four other times the government at Bogotắ begged that United States troops be sent to Panama. This may surprise many people who believe that nothing of the kind ever happened in that country before 1903, but there were revolutions in Panama not only before then, and before 1846, but even before Nathaniel Bacon, our own first "revolutionist," rose against the royal governor of Virginia, and burned Jamestown in 1676. To understand this properly we must go back to the time of Balboa.
Balboa, Pizarro, Cortez, and all the other conquistadores, were men of the Middle Ages, living by the sword and despising honest labor. They were robber-barons, forcing the conquered Indians to pay them tribute in
