If so-called modern science and engineering skill can bring prosperity, then the Isthmus of Panama includes the site of the world's last achievement in engineering, sanitation, and organized efficiency. Health conditions on the Canal Zone are better than in many cities of the United States. General Gorgas said that there were three causes for which the Americans left Panama in the old days: yellow fever, malaria, and cold feet, and that of the three the last caused more desertions than the other two combined. It is worth noting that the first two mentioned have now vanished entirely, and it but remains to find a preventive for frigid pedal extremities to make the tropics a white man's land. [Illustration: HAPPY KINDERGARTNERS, PANAMA] Panama and Colon to-day are clean and healthful. Even the tropical buzzard that hovers over every town and crossroad in this mid-America world has disappeared from these cities--starved to death. The American Board of Health looks after the garbage cans and backyards and drains, and woe be unto the unhappy mosquito that inadvertently wanders into this forbidden territory. The entire country is now free from yellow fever, and while there is some malaria in the lowlands during the wet season, health conditions are far better than might be supposed. The question of climate raises visions of burning days and sleepless nights. To people who have never lived in the tropics any lurid tale is plausible. But these tales of torment do not come from dwellers in the tropics, but from overheated imaginations of writers of fiction who find the tropics a rich field, because most of their readers know nothing of the subject. There are more comfortable days in Panama, per year, than in New York. There is rarely a night when one cannot sleep in comfort. If there were nothing the matter but the climate, there would be no reason for shunning Panama. By all the rules of the great game of getting rich, Panama ought to be both prosperous and progressive. Seemingly every chance has come her way. Yet the visitor does not find Panama as a whole either rich or energetic. The terminal cities, Panama and Colon, have lived pretty well off the proceeds of the Canal Zone, but the great interior country is sparsely inhabited by people who are neither prosperous nor progressive. Poverty, indolence, and dirt abound throughout the provinces. Education is attempted, and the present system, when perfected, will afford fairly good rudimentary training, but as now conducted it is a promise as well as a performance. With a high illiteracy the people of Panama cannot be said to live on a lofty intellectual plane. Not one man in a thousand makes the slightest attempt to improve the country, or takes the least interest in what the world is doing. [Illustration: YOUNG COSTA RICA IS ENTERPRISING]