Prowling about Panama. George A. Miller

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       George A. Miller

      Prowling about Panama

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066205867

Table of Contents

       FOREWORD

       CHAPTER I

       WHERE THE PROWLING IS GOOD

       CHAPTER II

       THE TRAIL OF THE PIRATES

       CHAPTER III

       PICTURESQUE PANAMA

       CHAPTER IV

       A CITY OF GHOSTS

       CHAPTER V

       THE SPELL OF THE JUNGLE

       CHAPTER VI

       LIFE AT THE BOTTOM

       CHAPTER VII

       THE INTERIOR

       CHAPTER VIII

       ECONOMIC WASTE

       CHAPTER IX

       PANAMA AND PROGRESS

       CHAPTER X

       KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS

       CHAPTER XI

       THE FAMILY TREE

       CHAPTER XII

       LATIN-AMERICAN HEART

       CHAPTER XIII

       THE CARIBBEAN WORLD

       CHAPTER XIV

       THE PANAMA CANAL

       CHAPTER XV

       PROWLING INTO THE FUTURE

FOREWORD

       Table of Contents

      The fine art of prowling may be achieved, but is more often a gift of those to the manner born. Professional globe-trotters are not prowlers. They are often the victims of their own sense of superiority. Personally conducted tours are little help to real prowling, and professional guides reduce the sight-seer to a machine for receiving "canned" information with gaping mouth, while with his free hand he extracts tips from his reluctant pocket.

      Prowling is an instinct, a sixth sense of locations and values. The prowler must have intuition and imagination and perseverance and historical perspective, but with these he must have something else—that inner vision that finds values in everything human. The expert explorer will find something interesting in Sahara, but almost any prowler will have a rare time in Panama.

      Probably no spot in the New World has served as the location of so many kinds of events and interests as this narrow neck of land between two continents. Brief histories of it have been well written, and the visitor should by all means read at least one of them. It remains for some seer yet to tell worthily the story of the four centuries that link the last discovery of the world's greatest explorer with the final achievement of the world's most skillful builders.

      Panama furnishes an epitome of history. Nearly everything that has ever happened anywhere in the world has had some counterpart or parallel in Panama, and of the coming results of the new forces now released on the Isthmus time alone can be the measure.

      This book makes no claims to consistency. Where contradictory characteristics abound and motives are much mixed, both sides may be faithfully set forth, but to reconcile them is a difficult matter. There will be no unified and consistent life on the Isthmus until the advancing civilization now there outgrows some of its present traits.

      Can one tell the truth about Panama and return to the Isthmus? That remains to be proven. Much depends on the spirit of the prowler. As well ask whether one can tell the truth about Chicago and be welcome to that metropolis. Probably Chicago would pay no attention to the comment, but Panama might take enough interest to notice.

      This is not a guidebook. Heaven forbid! It is merely a few notes of a prowler who found Panama interesting.

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

WHERE THE PROWLING IS GOOD

       Table of Contents

      Panama is the great American curiosity shop. The first city founded by explorers in the New World, the oldest town in America inhabited by white men, the most conglomerate mixture of humanity on earth are in Panama. The bloodiest tale of modern history, the most romantic story of American exploration, the greatest engineering achievement of man all center in Panama.

      If there be any interest in congested and sweltering