gave up their biographies in nasal monosyllables amid the slop of “suds” and the scrape of celluloid froth-eradicators.  Rare was the land that had not sent representatives to this great dirt-shoveling congress.  A Syrian merchant gasped for breath and fell over his counter in delight to find that I, too, had been in his native Zakleh, five Punjabis all but died of pleasure when I mispronounced three words of their tongue.  Occasionally there came startling contrast as I burst unexpectedly into the ancestral home of some educated native family that had withstood all the tides of time and change and still lived in the beloved “Emperador” of their forefathers.  Anger was usually near the surface at my intrusion, but they quickly changed to their ingrown politeness and chatty sociability when addressed in their own tongue and treated in their own extravagant gestures.  It was almost sure to return again, however, at the question whether they were Panamanians.  Distinctly not!  They were Colombians!  There is no such country as Panama.

Thus the enrolling of the faithful continued.  Chinese laundrymen divulged the secrets of their mysterious past between spurts of water at steaming shirt-bosoms; Chinese merchants, of whom there are hordes on the Zone, cueless, dressed and betailored till you must look at them twice to tell them from “gold” employees, the flag of the new republic flapping above their doors, the new president in their lapels, left off selling crucifixes and breastpin medallions of Christ to negro women, to answer my questions.  One evening I stumbled into a nest of eleven Bengali peddlers with the bare floor of their single room as bed, table, and chairs; in one corner, surmounted by their little embroidered skull-caps, were stacked the bundles with which they pester Zone housewives, and in another their god wrapped in a dirty rag against profaning eyes.

Many days had passed before I landed the first Zone resident I could not enroll unassisted.  He was a heathen Chinee newly arrived, who spoke neither Spanish nor English.  It was “Chinese Charlie” who helped me out.  “Chinese Charlie” was a resident of the Zone before the days of de Lesseps and at our first meeting had insisted on being enrolled under that pseudonym, alleging it his real name.  Upstairs above his store all was sepulchral silence when I mounted to investigate—­and I came quickly and quietly down again; for the door had opened on the gaudy Oriental splendor of a joss-house where dwelt only grinning wooden idols not counted as Zone residents by the materialistic census officials.  On the Isthmus as elsewhere “John” is a law-abiding citizen—­within limits; never obsequious, nearly always friendly, ready to answer questions quite cheerily so long as he considers the matter any of your business, but closing infinitely tighter than the maltreated bivalve when he fancies you are prying too far.