ector, as I bade the room
good-day and stepped forth with my most military stride and bearing,
"and report back here Friday morning."

I descended to the world below, not by the long perspective of stairs
that leads down and across the gully to the heart of Ancon, but by a
short-cut that took me quickly into a foreign land. The graveled
highway at the foot of the hill I might not have guessed was an
international boundary had I not chanced to notice the instant change
from the trim, screened Zone buildings, each in its green lawn, to the
featureless architecture of a city where grass is all but unknown; for
the formalities of crossing this frontier are the same as those of
crossing any village street. It was my first entrance into the land of
the panamenos, technically known on the Zone as "Spigoties," and
familiarly, with a tinge of despite, as "Spigs"; because the first
Americans to arrive in the land found a few natives and cabmen who
claimed to "Speaga dee Eng-leesh."

To Americans direct from the States Panama city ranks still as rather a
miserable dawdling village. But that is due chiefly to lack of
perspective. Against the background of Central America it seemed almost
a great, certainly a flourishing, city. Even to-day there are many who
complain of its unpleasant odors; to those who have lived in other
tropical cities its scent is like the perfumes of Araby; and none but
those can in any degree realize what "Tio Sam" has done for the place.

Toward sunset I passed through a gateway with scores of
fellow-countrymen, all as composedly at home as in the heart of their
native land. Across the platform stood a train distinctively American
in every feature, a bilious-yellow train divided by the baggage car
into two sections, of which the five second-class coaches behind the
engine, with their wooden benches, were densely packed in every
available space with workmen and laborer's wives, from Spaniards to
ebony negroes, with the average color decidedly dark. In the
first-class cars at the Panama end were Americans, all but exclusively
white Americans, with only here and there a "Spigoty" with his long
greased hair, his finger rings, and his effeminate gestures, and even a
negro or two. For though Uncle Sam may permit individual states to do
so, he may not himself openly abjure before the world his assertion as
to the equality of all men by enacting "Jim Crow" laws.

We were soon off. Settled back in the ample seat