While native architecture is not stately it is artistic in that it harmonizes with its natural surroundings and is eminently adapted to the needs of the people who inhabit the huts.] It is beyond doubt to the ease with which life can be sustained, and the torpidity of the native imagination which depicts no joys to spur one on to effort that the unwillingness of the native to do systematic work is due. And from this difficulty in getting labor follows the fact that not one quarter of the natural resources of Panama are developed. Whether the labor problem will be solved by the distribution throughout the republic of the Caribbean blacks who have worked so well on the Zone is yet to be seen. It may be possible that because of this the fertile lands of Panama, or the savannas so admirably fitted for grazing, can only be utilized by great corporations who will do things on so great a scale as to justify the importation of labor. Today the man who should take up a large tract of land in the Chiriqui country with a view to tilling it would be risking disaster because of the uncertainty of the labor supply. [Illustration: CONSTRUCTION OF ROOF OF A NATIVE HOUSE The photograph is taken looking directly upward from the ground floor] Another obstacle in the way of foreign settlement of Panama has been the uncertainty of land titles. Early surveyors seem to have been in the habit of noting as the identification marks of their lines such volatile objects as a blackbird in a tree, or such perishable ones as an ant hill or a decaying stump. Facilities for recording titles also have been ill arranged. One of the first tasks of the new Republic was to take up this matter and it has been reduced to fairly systematic form. The Republic is offering for sale great quantities of public lands long held as commons by various municipalities. Much of this land lies along the line of the railroad from Panama to David, and is of varying grades suitable for grazing, forestry or agriculture. A fixed price of 50 cents per hectare is charged, a hectare being practically 2¹⁄₂ acres. The government has gone quite efficiently into the task of disposing of these lands, and pamphlets explanatory of methods of securing titles, terms, etc., can be obtained by addressing the Administrator-General at Panama. The Pan-American Union, of Washington, D. C., has issued a pamphlet giving a summary in English of the Panamanian law bearing upon the subject. [Illustration: A NATIVE LIVING ROOM AND STAIRWAY By pulling up the bamboo ladder, or turning it, communication with the upper floor is closed]