Large numbers of West Indian women, the majority of them with their relatives, lived on the Zone during the construction period. They were for the most part industrious and made very good household servants. They were nearly always polite and deferential, some of them even saying, "Please, Ma'am," when saying "Good morning." It was a rare experience to travel on a ship carrying workers to the Canal Zone from the Islands of the West Indies. Ships calling at Kingston, Jamaica, would usually take on a hundred or more passengers. They would be quartered either forward or aft on the main deck. They would carry aboard with them all kinds of small packages. Some would have small boxes of chickens or pigeons, and some little old sawbuck-fashioned folding beds covered with canvas. As soon as inspected by the doctor for trachoma each negro would select the most favorable spot, gather his furniture around him, and settle down in one place, there to remain almost without moving during the whole of the 40-hour trip across the Caribbean. When the water was fine and the sailing smooth the first cabin passengers might conclude that they were carrying a negro camp meeting. On the other hand, if the weather were bad and the sea rough, a sicker lot of people nowhere might be found. One of the favorite negro preventives of seasickness is St. Thomas bay rum applied liberally to the face, although to the on-looker it never seems to prevent or cure a single case. Before landing at Colon every one of these negroes had to be vaccinated. Almost without exception they tried to prevent the virus "taking" by rubbing the scarified spot with lime juice or with some other preparation. Meals on board generally consisted of rice and potatoes, and, perhaps, coffee and bread. One might see a dozen young girls in a group eating with one hand and with the other polishing their complexions with the half of a lime. With all his faults--and they were not few--the West Indian negro laborer probably was the best workman that could have been employed for the job at Panama. He was usually as irresponsible, as carefree, and yet as reliable a workman as our own American cottonfield hand. He made a law-abiding citizen on the Zone, was tractable as a workman, and pretty certain always to make a fair return to the United States on the money it paid him in wages. Under the firm but gentle guidance of the master American hand, he did his work so well that he has forever erased from the record of his kind certain charges of inefficiency and laziness that had long stood as a black mark against him. The Canal Commission so appreciated his good work that it made arrangements to return him to his native country when his services no longer were required, there to take up the life he led before he heard the call of the "spiggoty" dollars that took him across the Caribbean.