Of the saloons and restaurants, with imposing names and uninviting aspect, much might be said. Even the best of them could be improved with little difficulty, but they serve well enough the uncritical tastes of their patrons. The better class cafés or bars in Colon and Panama are generally attached to hotels; and in the time when the French Company’s headquarters were in the Plaza at Panama the cafés and saloons were filled with exuberant life, until the early morning hours, and the larger and more important bars were the most popular places in the [Illustration: A BIT OF THE OLD TOWN.] city. But to-day the clubs have taken the places of saloons, as far as the higher officials are concerned, while the spread of the canal offices all along the route has greatly affected the business of the saloons. Still on Saturdays and Sundays many of the gold employees on the Zone (clerks, steam-shovel men, engineers, foremen, supervisors, timekeepers, and others, whose occupation it would be difficult to discover) flock into Panama, to witness the baseball games and meet their friends. At such times the saloons and bars enjoy once more a taste of their almost forgotten popularity. The most important saloon is that attached to the Hotel Central in the Plaza. If you sit in it from early morning till late in the evening, you will be certain to meet with every important person in the city. Some you would see very often, others but seldom. Their merry chatter and hilarity make the place lively, and their almost unquenchable thirst keeps the bar-tender busy. Always parched and thirsty themselves, they are obsessed with the opinion that everybody they meet is suffering from the same complaint. Before dinner-time, about half-past six in the evening, the crowd in the saloon of the “Central” gathers, and each small round table is the centre of a noisy group of companions who order cocktails, “high bulls,” and other cheering concoctions. Meanwhile small boys shout the evening paper, a miserable little sheet that never contains any news sufficiently important to cause comment, for all the information it prints has been discussed hours before. Nevertheless, many copies are sold, for the Panamanian, ever anxious to keep abreast with the manners and customs of civilised communities, generally buys a copy. Old women with lottery tickets do quite a large business at this hour, for after the twentieth cocktail even the most accomplished drinker becomes a little regardless and throws his money about recklessly. But for all that, great care is taken in choosing with a becoming semblance of sober judgment a number that the purchaser has some very particular fancy for. Once a ticket has been sold, the demands of others, always ready to emulate the plunging of a good sportsman, keep the vendor of chances busy. Two or three of the roysterers will join together and purchase a ticket between them. The division into shares and complex allotments of