The annual vacations of the workers during the construction period may properly be considered in connection with sanitation work on the Zone, for they were not permitted to be mere loafing time. The man who took a vacation was not allowed to stay on the Isthmus. If he tried to stay there Col. Goethals found it out in that omniscient fashion of his and it was a case of hike for a change of air or go back to work. For, notwithstanding the fact that Col. Gorgas pulled the teeth of the tropics with his sanitary devices and regulations, an uninterrupted residence in that climate does break down the stamina and enfeeble the energy of men from more temperate climes. Every employee was given 42 days’ vacation with full pay, but he had to quit the Zone for some country which would afford a beneficial climatic change. Of course most went back to the United States, being encouraged thereto by a special rate on the steamship of $30--the regular rate being $75. But beside this vacation each employee was entitled to 30 days’ sick leave. It was not an exceedingly difficult task to conjure up enough symptoms to persuade a friendly physician to issue a sick order. The favorite method of enjoying this respite from work was to spend as little of the time as possible at Ancon, and the rest at the sanitarium on the Island of Taboga. [Illustration: TABOGA IS FURTHERMORE THE CONEY ISLAND OF PANAMA] That garden spot in the Bay of Panama where the French left the sanitarium building we now use is worth a brief description. You go thither in a small steamboat from Balboa or Panama and after about three hours’ steaming a flock of little white boats, each with a single oarsman, puts out from the shore to meet you like a flock of gulls as you drop anchor in a bay of truly Mediterranean hue. To the traveled visitor the scene is irresistibly reminiscent of some little port of Southern Italy, and the reminder is all the more vivid when one gets ashore and finds the narrow ways betwixt the elbowing houses quite Neapolitan for dirt and ill odor. But from the sea one looks upon a towering hill, bare toward its summit, closely covered lower down by mango, wild fig, and ceiba trees, bordered just above the red roofs of the little town by a fringe of the graceful cocoanut palms. Then come the houses, row below row, until they descend to the curving beach where the fishing boats are drawn up out of reach of the tide which rises some 20 feet.