If the far interior of Panama is to be judged by present industrial efficiency, the case is lost before the trial begins. General absence of everything that marks a high grade of living emphasizes the failure of the status quo. Incompetence, bad management, childishness cry aloud from rotting buildings, rusting machinery, neglected plantings, impassable "roads," and impossible officials. Streets knee-deep in mire, mud-floored houses, through which pigs wander at will, shiftlessness, dirt, insanitation are the register of the wet season in interior Panama. The outstanding church building is often itself dirty and disheveled. Sidewalks exist only as balconies for individual houses, and vary in height at the caprice of the builder, making the middle of the street the only convenient highway for the passers-by. The bulk of this out-of-the way business is handled by the ever-present Chino with his little tienda. If there is no Chinese store in the town, it is because the town is too poor to support one. Business involves effort and industry, both distasteful to the native, but breath-of-life to the Chinese. Inspection of some native towns creates the impression that everybody just sits around all day. Along the streets the people lounge the idle hours away. Hundreds of young men lie about, rocking in chairs, lying in hammocks, hanging about corners. Women slowly move about their household duties, but the men are experts at the rest cure, and scarcely move at all. Once a young man gets a pair of shoes and a necktie, his industrial career abruptly terminates, and thenceforth he toils not, neither does he spin. He has arrived and is content. [Illustration: TAKING THE REST CURE] Lack of energy brings inevitable localization of all interest and action. Most of the people have never been any distance from home and have no desire to travel. Travel means exertion of some kind. I asked a guide to go one day further than the first-day trip for which I had hired him, and he returned an embarrassed and deprecating smile, as if I had asked him to go to the French front. It was too far from home. It is impossible to get information worth anything about the country. "How many people live in this town?" brings one of two answers. Either it is, "I do not know," or it is "Bastante" ("Plenty"). "How far is it to Los Santos?" brings something like, "Senor, when the sun is there [pointing] you set out on your journey, and when it is over there, you will arrive." We crossed a well-traveled road. "Where does this road lead?" "To the port, senor." "And where does the other end of it go?" "To San Pedro, senor." "How far is it to the port?" "The same distance as to San Pedro." "And how far is that?" "Bastante lejo, senor" ("Plenty far, sir").