The capitals of all the Central American countries except Panama are pretty cities of white-walled houses, nestled on the up lands of the interior.
Colon and Panama, at the ends of the Panama Canal, are chiefly supported by busi ness arising from the passage of many ships through that great waterway. Both cities are in the Canal Zone, a strip of land which was ceded by the Republic of Panama to the United States before the canal was built. The Canal Zone is ruled by a governor sent out by the United States.
373. The Yucatan sisal district.—The wide flat plain of northern Yucatan differs from the rest of this coast because it has less rain. Still worse, the little rain that falls runs away, into caves and underground paRsages that are present because the rock is lime stone. (Sec. 22). Conse quently this region has no real forest. Much of it is covered with the scraggy growth of the century plant, whose long leaves have a fiber good for mak ing cordage. Millions of dollars worth of this fiber, called sisal, is shipped each year from the port of Pro greso. American farmers use it to bind up the sheaves of wheat at harvest time.
Southeastern Yucatan is quite a different place. Here the rainfall is greater, and the solid forest is so thick that for many miles the land is absolutely uninhabited, even by wild Indians.
374. Mexican oil.—One of the great oil fields of the world is in the northern part of the Mexican lowlands, near the port of Tampico. Sometimes when wells are dug, the oil spurts out in a solid stream. Single wells have produced millions of barrels. Each year hundreds of tank-ships loaded with tens of thousands of gallons of valuable crude petroleum sail out of the port of Tampico for American and European ports. English and American companies run this industry. The engineers and the skilled men are usually Americans, but most of the work is done by the Indians and half-breeds of Mexico.
375. Americans and the banana.—The forest of the hot lands, where forages only the Indian has lived, is at last being conquered by an organized industry. (Fig. 301.) New
villages are springing up on the hot coasts of Central America. Thousands of men live there and work for American banana com panies. These men attack the forest almost as an army besieges a fortress. A banana company begins work by building a wharf on some protected bay. Next, a village is, built to shelter the workers, and a hospital is established where a physician and nurses care for the sick. Then a ship brings white superintendents, bookkeepers, machinists, and other skilled persons from the United States. Other ships bring hundreds of black men from Jamaica or other West Indian islands. The newcomers move into the houses, and the black men begin to chop down the forest. The trees are allowed to lie as they fall, for in a few months all will have been eaten by the white ants. These terrible insects sometimes enter houses and eat up the furniture. If you lived in tropic America, some day when you touched your desk it might fall to pieces, the inside entirely eaten out by the ants. If you picked up a book, you might find that it was only a shell—the white ants having eaten it. But the ants are useful help in the banana plantation, where they eat up a whole forest after men have cut it down. Little banana plants are stuck in among the fallen trees on the newly cleared land, and every few weeks the black men come with their machetes to chop down the bushes that would otherwise choke the plants and keep the sunshine and plant food away from them. In twelve months the trees have become much higher than a man, and have bunches of green bananas hanging ready for the harvest.
Then one day the superintendent of a banana plantation receives a wireless message from a ship at sea. It tells him to have bananas ready in three days. Everybody goes to work. A single blow of the machete (Fig. 300) cuts a bunch of green bananas from the tree. A mule carries two bunches at a time to a little narrow-gauge railroad that connects the plantation with the larger railroad leading to the wharf and the ship.