disease-breeding coastal lands in Costa Rica, Honduras, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica, and San Domingo. They had already worked out most of the basic principles imperative in combating tropical disease on a large scale. The head of the Tulane School of Tropical Medicine of New Orleans has this to say:

"The magic touch of tropical sanitation introduced by the United Fruit Company has transformed this deadly climate into a habitable zone. The

vast improvements there do the genius of American medical men a credit that only future ages will appreciate. Everyone knows what great sanitary work the American Government has accomplished on the Canal Zone, but few realize that a similar improvement has been worked in the rich fruit centers of every country to the south of us, and that the United Fruit Company is entitled to the credit for this achievement."

From the time that Colonel Gorgas

began his crusade in Panama there was hearty co-operation between the medical staff of the United States Government and that directed by the United Fruit Company. In the same year the company undertook to clear and cultivate a very large tract of land along the Chiriqui Lagoon in the Republic of Panama, so that comparative operations came close. This region is now so attractive that visitors think it destined to become the Thousand Isles of the Tropics, in beauty far exceeding the wonder spot of the St. Lawrence. From the earliest moment the United Fruit Company promoted as rapidly as possible whatever laboratory and other studies were needed either on the ground or at departments of available medical colleges for solving every difficulty in the way of safe and comfortable life for white people along the shores of the Caribbean Sea. Now every tropical division of the company has a fine hospital which undertakes the

responsibility of looking out for the health not only of all the army of United Fruit employees, from happy-go-lucky Jamaican negro to superintendent, but for all the surrounding region also. In 1871, when Minor C. Keith was struggling with his dream of emulating in Central America some of the railroad triumphs which his uncle, Henry Meiggs, was achieving in Peru, the natives of all the tropical lands of the Americas lived on the highlands in the middle of their several countries and could not on any pretext be inveigled into coming down to the dreaded tierras calientes. They did their trading, what little there was of it, on the Pacific side, because that slope was more abrupt and hence less drenched with terrifying moisture. Mr. Keith's workmen died by hundreds and the railroad got lost in the wilderness of ferns. Not

only humble negro laborers but scores of young American engineers and others of skilled professions had given. up their lives, and funds went for a time, too. Mr. Keith was near despair, when he happened to think of clearing a bit of swamp, planting bananas, and utilizing the finished piece of railway to carry the fruit to the neighboring harbor. The dwindling band of laborers had unbounded allegiance for their youthful explorer; they stood by him faithfully and helped work out the experiment that won the day for them all. A few years later Mr. Keith was vice-president of the company which Mr. Preston had organized, and brought to it the knowledge of tropic regions and many of the ambitious visions which have guided it so far beyond the commonplace. Now passengers for Costa Rica land at the beautiful and

healthful city of Puerto Limon, where the first rails were laid so tragically in 1871, and from there take a train to San Jose through miles of arching banana leaves, along the Reventazon River, and up among the verdant plateaus of the cordillerasone of the loveliest rides in the world. Mr. Keith is well known as the head of the "Pan-American Railway," the tracks of which will link New York with Rio Janeiro and Buenos Aires in the not distant future if Mexico does not blow itself off the map.

Not only sanitation but scientific agriculture had to be applied in these tropic holdings. Each plantation became a vast farm, with live stock and gardens, telephones, railways, and a wide miscellany of minor industries, besides schools, churches, and healthful amusements, which make it a contented and self-supporting community. In the neighborhood usually usually are grouped numerous smaller banana growers. These are much favored by the United Fruit Company, which assists with loans, leases, etc., every honest attempt to reclaim the tropic waste lands. It costs from $40 to $60 an acre to bring jungle land into banana bearing. No bank in that part of the world will lend money for such a purpose, while outside capital is seldom available for less than 12 per cent. The United Fruit Company has loaned millions of dollars at low rates to encourage native land owners to undertake banana cultivation and American citizens to buy banana lands adjacent to its own. Such small growers are not dependent on the United Fruit Company to purchase their fruit, although this company usually pays the highest contract price. Competition to secure contracts with these growers is quite keen, for, as I have previously stated, the United Fruit Company has no monopoly of the banana trade. Under favorable conditions, capably conducted banana farms of small size where the owner does not hire much

labor yield annually about the same amount per acre that it cost to bring the land under cultivation. This is considered a fair return. Yet it was not until American enterprise showed them how and urged them to try that the people of Central and northern South America ever cultivated anything for commerce.

yet

Guatemala has been included in the field of banana operations for some five years. Only the southern part of British Honduras has proved suitable for this fruit; but this land is fitted for many other kinds of S riculture. When peace is forced on her neighbors, British Honduras will come into its heyday. Spanish Honduras is also a land of remarkable natural resources, scarcely touched. The United Fruit Company is developing large plantations at Tela. This is the company's newest division and here they are carrying out some of the most difficult and brilliant campaigns of sanitation ever undertaken, transforming with sand, screens, petroleum and good generalship a very pest-hole of a swamp into a life-sustaining countryside of gardens. In Colombia they have built for the old city of Santa Marta a fine modern port and surrounded it with wonderful irrigated farms which are filling the long empty pockets of the laborers and teaching them to respect the tinkle of a coin. Medical staffs in a score of little towns among these farms have the natives so well trained that the buzz of a mosquito will send them on the warpath quite as zealously as a man-eating lion or tiger does the Wataveta warrior in East Africa. In all its holdings the whole region surrounding a plantation depends on the medical staff and hospital stationed there.

The United Fruit Company owns 1,098,995 and leases 111,448 acres in the American tropics, of which 150,000 acres are under banana cultivation representing about twenty-nine per cent of the total acreage devoted

to this fruit. In Cuba are the famous sugar lands of Saetia and Nipe Bay.

Besides all its other activities the United Fruit Company has found time to remember that the world likes to travel nowadays, to watch these big enterprises in operation, to revel in the glories of a tropic sea and the wonders of mountain-bastioned and quaintly foreign lands. So the same steamers which bring northward the only food product that has not responded to the "high cost" deemed necessary to keep other Business firms alive today, will take you southward, if you wish, in the most delightful ease you ever found on Neptune's domain. The refrigerating mechanism that cools the fruit. will keep your stateroom at the temperature you enjoy on a summer day. Palms wave on the deck, music and books while away the carefree hours you don't spend looking out over the shimmering blue waves. Even a storm doesn't alarm you, for fruit steamers are built to breast the liveliest storm that ever sweeps across the Gulf of Mexico. And beyond those enchanting waters you will find some of the best hotels that have been built in any tropic land.

Still another great work has been done for the United States in the carriage at moderate rates of freight bound for various ports along the route of the fruit trade. New and very profitable markets have thus been opened up to our manufacturers, forming a strong tie with the people of Central America in particular, for they had been fairly shut off in the past from the world of trade. The single port of New Or

leans, for instance, between 1900 and 1911, according to certified customhouse reports, increased its exports to the neighboring group of republics from $4,410,139 to $17,909,658. Much of this was carried in fruit ships. That is a significant degree of impetus to our longed-for mercantile marine.

So far-reaching and prophetic is the result of the United Fruit Company's example and efforts. The opening up to modern life and commerce of all the Caribbean littoral is due to the influence or direct campaign of this splendid New England company. Costa Rica in particular has learned to respect and desire the intimate friendship of her big sister republic. Costa Rica is a white man's republic, with a real middle class and a love for the arts of peace and honest revenue. The doors of this country are wide open to any honorable investor from the United States who cares to come and "exploit" its undeveloped resources. Some of these resources are very tempting. Panama also could stand a lot of judicious booming. Indeed there is room enough in the American tropics for all surplus New England energy to work, and diversity of opportunity waiting to suit any worthy ambition.

But New England enterprise must not pause at the tropics, when the whole rich continent is waiting a little farther south. What the United Fruit Company has achieved in its line, other companies can achieve in other lines if they will but follow the right course. But we need to strike out courageously, or we shall never swim. Nothing venture, nothing have.

CHAPTER III

AND FINDS A FAIRY GODFATHER RULING THERE

T

HIS stranger was a tall and easily standing man of fragile build.

His dress, as I have said, was of the shining white linen planters and other principal folk affect, and it had the easy looseness old men like. His face, too, thin and grave and marking him clearly as of Malay biood, with perhaps a slight infusion of the Chinese, was an old man's face. It was deeply lined, and the brownness of the skin was overlaid with a gray shadow.

But the pallor was healthy, like the grayness which shows on the sound trunk of an aged tree, and the lines were not the furrows of care and worry, but the hollows left by tissues. wasting normally. And the man's eyes, though unsmiling and perhaps a trifle weary from long looking on the world, were bright and keen still. Altogether, if Felicidad bred many such old men as this, it might not be all unworthy of its pretentious name. So it struck me suddenly.

The stranger broke the silence first. "One can but extend a welcome," said he with unpretending dignity, "and hope that every comer may find here what happiness he wishes."

"So friendly a greeting," I said to that, as sincerely as himself, "makes one trust that it may bring as much of happiness as the world owes one, at any rate, tanto de Felicidad como se le debe."

The bright old eyes scanned my face. "As the world owes?" the stranger echoed musingly. "I should

have said, as much as the good God grants, of His grace."

"And yet," said I, perhaps too impatiently, "that good God of yours is a trifle coquettish with His favors. To him that hath is given, and from him that hath not-"

As before, the thin old face retained its calm. "I have come," said the stranger, "to ask you to dine with me. It is not," he added, anticipating my refusal, "that I can hope to make you more comfortable. You have chosen a pleasant spot." There was no irony in the glance he cast about my airy habitation, and I knew then that he must have slept often under the stars and rested well there. "And we are very simple people. Our fare is simple, but you would give us pleasure by taking what we have to offer.

Visitors come seldom, and it

is our custom to ask them to tell us of the world. You are our newspaper," he added, smiling for the first time.

"Your hospitality is as unassuming as it is complete," said I, yielding to a sudden impulse of liking. "If you do not mind waiting till I have fetched some trifles from my prau-?"

He made a gesture of assent, but as I turned away he spoke again. "I hope you will not think it officious that a servant brought a few things for the supper of your men? A sweet potato roasted in the ashes adds a relish."

"The men will be most grateful," I answered, wondering what further evidences of thoughtfulness this stranger might have brought with him. out of the night.

When I returned from my hasty