If you consider the pictures of certain streets of Colon during two phases of their history, you will have little trouble in understanding why the death rate in the town has been steadily decreasing. In a town built upon a natural morass, and on which more than eleven feet of water fell annually, there was hardly a foot of paving except the narrow sidewalks. In the wet season, which extends over eight months of the year, the mud in these filthy by-ways was almost waist deep. Into it was thrown indiscriminately all the household slops, garbage and offal. There was no sewage system; no effort at drainage. If one wished to cross a street there was nothing for it but to walk for blocks until reaching a floating board benevolently provided by some merchant who hoped to thus bring custom to his doors. Along the water front between the steamship piers and the railroad there was an effort to pave somewhat as there was heavy freight to be handled, but even there the pavement would sink out of sight overnight, and at no time could it be kept in good condition. The agents of the Panama Railroad and the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, whose freight houses adjoined, dumped into the seemingly bottomless abyss everything heavy and solid that could be brought by land or water, but for a long time without avail. Under the direction of the United States officers, however, the problem was solved, and today the streets of Colon are as well paved as those of any American city, vitrified brick being the material chiefly used. [Illustration: “BOTTLE ALLEY” A typical Colon street before the Sanitary Department concluded the work of cleaning up] In the days when there was no pavement there were no sewers. Today the town is properly drained, and the sewage problem, a very serious one in a town with no natural slope and subject to heavy rains, is efficiently handled. There was no water supply. Drinking water was brought from the mainland and peddled from carts, or great jars by water carriers. Today there is an aqueduct bringing clear cool water from the distant hills. It affords a striking commentary upon the lethargy and laziness of the natives that for nearly half a century they should have tolerated conditions which for filth and squalor were practically unparalleled. The Indian in his palm-thatched hut was better housed and more healthfully surrounded than they. Even the French failed to correct the evil and so failing died like the flies that swarmed about their food and their garbage indiscriminately. Not until the Americans declared war on filth and appointed Col. W. C. Gorgas commander-in-chief of the forces of cleanliness and health did Colon get cleaned up.