“The Orientals of the Isthmus deserve a word in passing. They are chiefly Chinese coolies and form a large part of the small merchant class. Others, in the hill districts, cultivate large truck gardens, bringing their produce swinging over the shoulders on poles to the city markets. Their houses and grounds are very attractive, built of reed or bamboo in the eastern fashion and marked everywhere by extreme neatness, contrasting so strikingly with the homes and surroundings of their negro neighbors. Many cultivate fields of cane or rice as well, and amidst the silvery greens, stretching for some distance, the quaint blue figures of the workmen in their huge hats make a charming picture. Through the rubber sections Chinese ‘middlemen’ are of late frequently found buying that valuable commodity for their fellow countrymen in Panama City, who are now doing quite a large business in rubber. These people live much as in their native land, seldom learning more than a few words of Spanish (except those living in the towns), and they form a very substantial and good element of the population”. [Illustration: THE PEARL ISLAND VILLAGE OF SABOGA] To enumerate even by names the aboriginal tribes would be tedious and unavailing. Among the more notable are the Doracho-Changuina, of Chiriqui, light of color, believing that the Great Spirit lived in the volcano of Chiriqui, and occasionally showing their displeasure with him by shooting arrows at the mountain. The Guaymies, of whom perhaps 6000 are left, are the tribe that buried with their dead the curious golden images that were once plentiful in the bazaars of Panama, but are now hard to find. They have a pleasant practice of putting a calabash of water and some plantains by a man they think dying and leaving him to his fate, usually in some lonesome part of the jungle. The Cunas or Caribs are the tribes inhabiting the Darien. All were, and some are, believed still to be cannibals. Eleven lesser tribes are grouped under this general name. As a rule they are small and muscular. Most of them have abandoned their ancient gaudy dress, and so far as they are clothed at all wear ordinary cotton clothing. Painting the face and body is still practiced. The dead often are swung in hammocks from trees and supplied with fresh provisions until the cords rot and the body falls to the ground. Then the spirit’s journey to the promised land is held to be ended and provisions are no longer needed. Sorcery and soothsaying are much in vogue, and the sorcerers who correspond to the medicine men of our North American Indians will sometimes shut themselves up in a small hut shrieking, beating tom-toms and imitating the cries of wild animals. When they emerge in a sort of self-hypnotized state they are held to be peculiarly fit for prophesying. [Illustration: NATIVE VILLAGE AT CAPERA]