Limes, mangoes and sugar cane are grown, but not exported. Timber grows plentifully, but the industry, so far as concerns the Atlantic seaboard, has declined; cocobolo, a wood somewhat resembling logwood, is sent to Germany and the United States, while mahogany and cedarwood are exported in small quantities; fustic and logwood are found.

Sponge of apparently good quality has recently been discovered in some quantity near San Blas, and inquiries have been made from the United States with a view to its possible exploitation.

General conditions of trade.-Colon derives its chief importance from its shipping and transit trade, and its position on the cross roads of the New World; local trade is largely carried on by a number of firms which import wholesale and sell as retail dealers, without the intervention of the middleman; their operations do not as a rule extend outside the town and immediate neighbourhood.

The population being composed chiefly of poor and uneducated persons, the general demand is for cheap goods. American influence predominates and affects methods of trade, a fact due to the comparative proximity of the United States and the presence of Americans on the Canal zone.

Textiles.-Bradford and Manchester goods, woollens, cottons and prints still dominate the market; tweeds are imported, but it should be borne in mind that the climate requires the lightest possible kind.

Silks, &c.-A quantity of Chinese silks and fancy goods are imported.

Furniture, hardware, &c.-Cheap chairs and tables are mainly imported from the United States.

Of imported hardware 90 per cent. comes from the United States, which also supplies the greater part of the guns and ammunition.

The members of the fire brigade are furnished with double-bar bicycles, costing about 77., and made in Chicago.

Liquors and food-stuffs.—Whisky is imported in about equal quantities from the United Kingdom and the United States; light German and American beers are preferred to the British variety, which as a rule is too heavy, though some British pale ale is consumed. Stout is almost entirely of British origin.

Cheap German liqueurs and Chinese rum are in great demand at the small bars frequented by the poorest class of natives and West Indians. Other liquors of British make are ginger ale, kola, lemonade, Old Tom gin, dry gin and sloe gin.

Considerable quantities of British groceries are used, there being in particular a large demand for biscuits, pickles, jams and condensed milk.

Fruit and vegetables come from Jamaica (which also does a large trade in cigars and cigarettes), yams, sweet potatoes and a small quantity of sugar from Barbados.

Savanilla, in Colombia, sends bran, and Cartagena a number of turkeys at Christmas.

Large consignments of flour are regularly received from New York, while grain, and particularly heavy oats and corn, come from Canada

(400)

B 2

Industries. Waters.-There are several small factories for the local production of aërated waters.

Light and ice.-The Colon Electric Light and Ice Company supplies 1,200 16 candle-power lights, and has an ice plant with a capacity of

10 tons.

Tobacco. Colon possesses one cigar factory; its cigars are for the most part filled with Jamaican tobacco, while the outside wrappers are grown in Java; a cheaper class of cigar is also made and filled with the native leaf; the latter, however, is of poorer quality, a fact apparently due solely to inferior methods of preparation, and there seems to be no reason why the native plant, if subjected to adequate treatment, should not rival the imported kind.

Wireless telegraphy.-A De Forrest wireless telegraph station is worked under the control of the United States Navy Department, and there is a service between the steamships of the United Fruit Company when in port and their wireless stations at Bocas del Toro and other Central American ports.

Bakery and laundry.—A steam bakery and laundry, worked by the Isthmian Canal Commission for the use of its employés, render them practically independent of the local establishments.

Steamship lines.-The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company have a fortnightly service from Southampton, viâ Barbados and Trinidad and the Colombian ports, proceeding by Kingston to New York, and returning by the same route. The Leyland and Harrison Lines from Liverpool give a combined service every 10 days. The United Fruit Company, an American undertaking, has within the last few years launched a fleet of ships registered in Glasgow under the name of the Tropical Fruit Company, which maintain two weekly services, one between Colon and New Orleans, calling at Port Limon, and the other with New York, viâ Sta. Marta, in Colombia, and Kingston. The HamburgAmerika Line have a regular passenger service with New York via Port Limon, and a line of cargo boats from Hamburg direct. Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, the Navigazione Générale Italiana and the Transatlantica Española run between European ports and Colon. The Panama Railroad steamers, of American register, run every five days to and from New York direct. A weekly motor boat service has recently been established for the carriage of mails and passengers between Colon and Bocas del Toro.

The

Port of Colon. The bay of Colon is about 4 miles in breadth; it affords ample harbourage, and is well protected except against winds from the north-east and west-north-west. Vessels coming to anchor are required to do so to the west of the buoys which mark the channel, 40 feet in depth, forming the entrance to the Canal.

Harbour improvements.-Limon Bay is exposed to north winds and to heavy seas caused by the trade winds which prevail during the dry season, the tendency of which is to fill the dredged channel of the Canal. It is therefore proposed to construct two breakwaters forming practically an arrow-head with the Canal channel, one extending 10,000 feet from Point Toro and the other an island breakwater of about 3,500 feet in length, running out from Manzanillo Bay. These will not only protect the channel against filling, but will give shelter

to shipping as soon as it reaches the lee of the breakwaters, as waves entering will have ample area over which to dissipate. Preparatory work for the construction of the Point Toro breakwater has been commenced. It is expected that the placing of rock from the double trestle which is being built from the shore will be begun in July, and that construction will proceed to ensure the completion of the entire breakwater in about three years.

There are three wharves in Colon belonging to the Panama Railroad Company, giving accommodation to six steamers from 350 to 400 feet in length; the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company have their own wharf at which steamers load and discharge.

Port dues.-Lighthouse tax for three lights costs a vessel of 2,000 tons net register about 121. Wharfage, payable to the Panama Railroad Company, amounts to 71. 2s. 6d. for each day or part thereof.

is

Port of Cristobal.-Cristobal, the Atlantic terminus of the Canal, open to commerce, but it is so far only used for vessels of the Panama Railroad and others loaded with consignments for the Canal Commission.

Only ships belonging to the Panama Railroad Company now berth at Wharf No. 11, which has been extended to Cristobal Point to allow ample berth for their two 10,000-ton steamers.

A new wharf, numbered 12 and 13, has been built since 1908 and is used by the Canal Commission for berthing their towboats, dredges and barges; the depth of water alongside is about 30 feet and the depth of the channel round Cristobal Point about the same.

Wharves Nos. 12, 13 and 14 have been taken over by the Canal Commission, who direct the labour on the wharves.

There is one coal berth at Dock 14, where an average of 900 tons can be discharged daily by means of the Brown hoist coal plant.

A French floating craneboat with a capacity of 25 tons is in use. The Cristobal dry dock is 300 feet long and 50 feet wide; it is used for the repair of steam dredges formerly used by the French Canal Company; the dock has been so much improved that the modern dredges of the Canal Commission can be docked there now.

Porto Bello.-The town of Porto Bello is situated on the coast at a distance of 21 miles from Colon; it is connected with the latter port by a daily service of tugboats, and the construction of a road is also contemplated. Porto Bello was in 1904 designated by the Government as a centre for the commerce of the surrounding district, which includes several cocoanut plantations, as well as for the native produce of the Indians who occupy the peninsula of San Blas; since that date the trade of the place is stated to have improved.

The harbour, which is largely made use of for the purposes of the coasting trade, and also attracts a small number of foreign-going vessels, is well protected, but is becoming rapidly filled up, the depth of water having shrunk very considerably in the course of the last century.

The entrance to the harbour is 1 kilom. in breadth, and the geographical advantages of the place, combined with its accessibility from Colon, should add considerably to its commercial value.

A whistling buoy, showing a white light at an elevation of 15 feet above the surface of the water, was installed last year at a quarter of a-mile from the entrance to Porto Bello Bay.

The quarries of New Porto Bello, a settlement of the Canal Commission on the north side of the bay, provide stone for the construction of the Gatun dam and other works, which is conveyed to its destination in lighters.

Cer

BOCAS DEL TORO.

Mr. P. Hamilton, Acting British Consular Agent, reports as follows:

The province of Bocas del Toro has a population of 22,198 persons, nearly all of them negroes, and more than 50 per cent. claim British nationality.

The capital, Bocas del Toro is situated on one of the many islands in Almirante Bay, and has a population of about 6,000, 60 per cent. of whom are coloured British subjects from the West Indies.

Almirante Bay is a splendid harbour, land-locked, and large enough to provide anchorage ground to the combined fleets of the world. It has two entrances: Boca de Drago (Dragon's mouth), seldom used as the passage is narrow; and Boca del Toro (Bull's mouth); the latter entrance will shortly have a lighthouse and buoys with lights to enable vessels to enter at night time.

Shipping.—A total of 335 vessels entered the port in 1909, with a tonnage of 290,120 tons, and of this number 280 were engaged in the

fruit trade.

The province of Bocas del Toro is the most prosperous of all the provinces in the Republic. The value of the duties collected in 1909 amounted to 49,2067., and produced a surplus over expenditure during the same period of 14,190., which sum was remitted to the National Treasury at Panama. The importations comprised provisions and clothing and drugs of every description, nearly all bought in the United States on account of the direct and regular steamship com

munication.

Bocas del Toro is also the largest exporting province in the Republic. The total exports for the whole Republic last year was 300,4951., and of this amount 179,4641. was exported from that province alone as the banana plantations of the United Fruit Company, which cover an area of about 30,000 acres, and the export of fruit in 1909 was valued

at 170,6841.

The United Fruit Company has built a fine concrete wharf in Cedar Creek, on the mainland, with an average depth of water alongside of 24 feet, and there is room for two vessels of 350 feet each alongside at the same time. Coal is imported from the United States, and the company can always supply from 200 to 500 tons at 8 dol. gold per ton to vessels calling there.

Work on the wharf was begun in 1907 and was completed last year at a cost of 32,000l.; altogether the company has expended 50,0001. on this terminal, which has been named Almirante." In time this is destined to become the largest exporting port in the Republic of Panama, giving access as it does to the vast lands, hitherto inaccessible, which abound in fine forests and are suitable for the cultivation of sugar cane, rubber, cocoa and coffee in the valleys or on the slopes of the mountains, which reach to an elevation of 7,000 feet, with a correspondingly cool climate suitable for foreign immigrants to labour in.

Annex A.-TABLE showing Total Imports and Countries of Origin during the Years 1907-09.

Annex B.-TABLE showing Total Imports during the Years 1908-09.