an Indian village some miles on his side of the Panama-Colombian border, and the Indians would not let him land even to protest to their chief about it. The San Blas have no use for white men: there is not a missionary, or a trader, or a half-breed in their country, and no white man has ever gone through it from Panama to South America.[1] Miss Annie Coop, an American missionary, visited the San Blas country for a short time in 1909, and hopes to be permitted to return there soon and establish a school, for while the tribal law excludes white men, it says nothing about white women. But neither the strictest tribal law nor the bravest tribal warriors, have ever kept white men permanently out of a country where there was gold. Sooner or later, there will be another "gold-rush"; a stampede of white men across this last frontier, outrages, treachery, and massacres on both sides, which the feeble Republic of Panama will be powerless to prevent, and which may force the armed intervention of the United States. Let us hope this may never come to pass. But it is not easy to keep white men on one side of a border, when there is gold on the other. As they were before Columbus came, so the Darien Indians are to-day, within fifty miles of where we are living in electric-lighted houses, and building the Panama Canal.
Soon the work will be finished and the long task done. Then the great working force will be broken up and scattered to the four corners of the earth, and the jungle will creep back and swallow up their houses as it has those of the Spaniards and the Frenchmen before them.
- ↑ See Appendix.
