They are here in great numbers, and they are very rough and vulgar.”

I felt resentful, but at the same time grateful to him for his courtesy, and I allowed him to call a coach and help me in. When I got to the gatehouse of Ancon Hospital I was told that my husband had been admitted to the yellow fever ward the night before. There were several men suspected of having yellow fever, and he was among them. I was told that it would be impossible to see him, as he was very ill and would not recognize me.

ARRIVAL AT PANAMA NINE YEARS AGO.

(PART II.)

HAT’S what I call hard luck,” said the doctor in charge. “Where are you going to stop? You’d better go to the Central. There’s American women down there.” He then gave me some quinine and bade me take care of myself, after which I entered the cab and was driven to the Central Hotel in Panama, where I engaged a room. It was up one flight and overlooked the Cathedral Plaza. The furniture consisted of two broken chairs, a broken table, a rickety desk of drawers, with pieces of string attached for handles, and a mirror very dim from age. There was no rug on the dirty floor, and there did not appear to be any means of lighting the place. The walls and ceilings were festooned with cobwebs, and the grime of many years completely covered the paint, which one might guess had once been an unsightly green. There were two small beds in the room, and on examining them I found them to be very clean. They were incongruously draped within white net, such as is used by milliners. The servant told me that the net was used to keep mosquitoes from biting the sleepers. For this disreputable apartment, with two meals and a cup of very bad coffee, I was to pay $5.00 gold per day. There was no bell in the room, and no one looked in to see if I might need anything. When I shut the door and put a chair against it I felt as much alone as if I was on a desert island. There was a little balcony outside the door, which looked out upon the street, and I sat on this the whole afternoon, as the gloom and dampness of the room depressed me terribly. When night came a negro brought me a candle stuck in an old black bottle. He also brought my dinner, although I had intended to go into the dining-room, which was well lighted, as I thought I might meet some American women there.

Day after day I sat on my little balcony and looked upon the plaza. I was too perturbed to read. Sometimes I went downstairs and entered the peaceful Cathedral, where I knelt before graven images and offered up Protestant prayers for my husband’s safe recovery and for my own peace of mind. In the hotel dining-room I noticed some women whom I thought might be Americans. They were bulging-browed, loud-voiced, unsocial to one another, and unfriendly to me. They were well groomed, however, and wore good jewels. Every day they rode horseback astride, and shouted to one another in nasal tones, but all my efforts to get acquainted with them were in vain. They looked at me as if to say: “Gee! but you do represent the gloomy side of Panama.” I subsequently learned that these women were the wives of contracting engineers and railroad men from the Far West. They were the only women in evidence in Panama at that time. I occasionally saw a sad-faced woman, carefully wrapped in a black shawl, on her way to the Cathedral to pray; an occasional Sister of Charity and negro workmen. The Panamanian ladies were in their camps in the country and at Taboga Island, and if there were any in the city they were timid about going into the streets, as Panama was filled to overflowing with adventurers from all over the world, for it was the reconstruction period, and the Isthmus was in a state of chaos. I had never seen such a variety of men. There were men who rode fine horses, looking like cavaliers of olden times. There were men who wore boots a la Meddowbrook, and other toggery not unlike those of the Meddowbrook Hunt Club. There were slick, fat, cheerful looking Chinamen who rode horseback at breakneck speed in the early morning hours and in the late hours of the afternoon. There were negroes of every hue, from shiny-black to that peculiar red-brown shade that denotes the dividing line. There were numbers of coaches drawn hither and thither filled to overflowing with men, black, white and brown. I had been looking at them from my balcony for several days, and at last I made up my mind to go into the street among them. I would sally forth in the late hours of the afternoon, and would usually walk to Ancon to make enquiries about my husband, and, unless I happened to be fortunate enough to find a coach that was not engaged, I walked back, “a foolhardy thing to do in those days,” said the hotel clerk in tones which denoted that he considered me very much under his protection. At first men leered at me, but after a time they passed me with averted gaze. They not infrequently got out of coaches and invited me to get in. They knew that the demand for coaches was greater than the supply, and it became generally known that I was alone and that my husband was ill in the Ancon Hospital. I soon began to learn who were Americans, because, no matter how drunk they appeared to be, whenever I met them on the streets of Panama they showed me some courtesy, which plainly said: “We’re with you, and we feel sorry for you.”

Negroes worked slowly in the streets under a broiling sun. They were paving Panama’s streets with brick at this time. It seemed a hopeless task, as viewed through a woman’s eyes. Mr. Durham had begun the work, but made slow progress, because of the restrictions imposed upon him. However, he must have been a man of courage to undertake such a work at that time. Mr. J. G. Holcomb subsequently brought the work to a successful completion. Something more impelling than a desire to earn $6,000 or $7,000 a year must have prompted these men to undertake to remodel the misshapen city of Panama, where the filth of three hundred years had accumulated. When the work was about finished, Mr. Holcomb was coolly discharged. The Panamanian Government, however, retained him, for the Panamanians knew how much they were really indebted to him. Colombia had never done anything for Panama, and most of the city’s streets were mere zigzag mounds of unwholesome red clay. The common people had never formed habits of cleanliness, and it was an interesting sight to see the sanitary squad at work cleaning out their houses. I often paused in my rambles to watch them. Two great wagons, containing barrels filled with oil and disinfectants, were drawn up to the doors of the houses which were to be cleaned. A rubber hose would be attached to the street hydrant and, after the rooms were carefully prepared with disinfectants, the water would be turned on and a number of men would proceed to scrub the ceilings, walls and floors. Then the oil would be sprinkled upon the spots outside which were thought might be breeding-places for mosquitoes. That rubbish, which is so dear to the heart of every housekeeper in the world, and which is to be found in a greater or less degree in the house of the banker and laborer alike, when discovered in the houses of the poor Panamanians, was confiscated by order of the head of the sanitation department and conveyed outside of the city and burned. In this way Panama was converted into the clean, well-ordered city it is to-day, and to Colonel Gorgas is due the credit of having made it so.

One afternoon while on my way to Ancon Hospital I met a man whom I had known in Boston during my schooldays. He was then a manufacturer of rubber goods, and apparently successful. Now he was a member of Colonel Gorgas’ sanitary squad. He told me that two