of Panama has a population of only three hundred and fifty thousand. Most of these are negroes, with a slight admixture of Indian blood, being the descendants of the Spanish slaves or workmen on the railroad or the Canal. Nearly all the white blood, as well as most of the wealth and business of the country, is concentrated in a small aristocracy, sometimes called the "Ten Families." If Chiriqui should begin to fill up with American farmers and cattlemen, a situation would be created very much like that in Texas in the early part of the nineteenth century, requiring the greatest tact on the part of the United States Government.
Across the Canal Zone, at the South American end of the Republic, things are very much to-day as they were four hundred years ago, in what was then called Darien, and is now spoken of as "the San Blas country." Here, as in the heart of the Florida Everglades, and in certain parts of South America, the red man is still supreme. He does not bother us in the Canal Zone, and we do not bother him. He is well supplied with the white man's weapons. Masters of trading-schooners that have plied up and down the San Blas coast for thirty years have seen from their decks rich stretches of hardwood jungle and fertile prairie, and have noticed the heavy gold ornaments worn by the Indians who paddled out to barter with them; but the traders have not gone ashore to investigate. No white man or negro may set foot in the San Blas country after sunset under penalty of death, by tribal law. When President Mendoza of the Republic of Panama went up the coast in a United States Government tug in 1908, he saw the Colombian flag flying above
