Prowling about PanamaMiller, George A. (George Amos)
Philosophy
Prowling about Panama
Miller, George A. (George Amos)
Panama -- Description and travel
The chief products of the country at present are bananas, lumber, rice,
sugar, cacao, meat, citrus fruits, corn, coffee, and coconuts. But there
are a hundred other products, many of which indicate large returns if
produced and marketed on a commercial scale. Rubber, ivory, nuts, hides,
beans, pineapples, potatoes, yams, yucca, cotton, tobacco, plantain, a
long list of fruits and vegetables of high value, and a number of minerals
are but a few of the useful commodities now being supplied to the markets
of the Canal Zone and the world from the interior country of Panama.
Nearly every vegetable that grows in the temperate climate does well in
Panama. Some of the native fruits, such as papayas, mangoes, and alligator
pears, are of delicious flavor and high value. The waters of Panama abound
in vast quantities of fish, and there is supply for a number of fish
canneries. Live stock thrives and is produced in considerable numbers in
the provinces of Cocle and Chiriqui. The Canal Zone is now being used as a
farming enterprise and stock grazing range by the administration of the
Zone with the intention of making the Zone area self-supporting in meat
and fruit and vegetables.
[Illustration: GOOD PINEAPPLES GROW HERE]
With an average import trade of ten millions and an export of more than
half that amount, Panama is even to-day a factor in the world's markets.
It must be said that the largest item on the import list is that of goods
shipped to the Zone, and that the chief export is bananas shipped from
Almirante, but these items indicate large possibilities in further
developments of territories as yet untouched.
The interior of Panama includes three general types of country, very
different in climate and produce. The high mountains are a large area of
country, much of which is fertile soil clear to the peaks, and all of
which on the northern slopes is covered with jungle and forest. These
wooded slopes are wet with abundant rainfall, and luxuriant foliage of
tropical forms bewilders the traveler with illusions of fantastic
creations of nature run mad over the earth. These mountainous parts are
for the most part uninhabited, except by the more or less wild Indians,
who live apart much as they were living four hundred years ago. No white
men have tried to maintain themselves in these regions, and in some
districts it is said that a white man's life is unsafe overnight. Tropical
beasts and reptiles and birds abound among the weird forms of vegetation
that seem to be perpetrating grotesque jokes on the bewildered visitor to
the regions beyond the realm of civilized habitations. There are as yet no
efforts made to establish towns or plantations in this country. Yet if
cleared and cultivated, these regions are capable of supporting a
population as dense as that of Porto Rico, where the steep hills and rocky
peaks are covered with a population of over three hundred per square mile.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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