Horrible Scenes in Panama.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 154, 15 May 1886, Page 6

Horrible Scenes in Panama.

The captain tells some frightful tales of the ravages of the fever in Panama. He states that the true facts are* suppressed, and the real horrors are never known. " Why," he said, "it is a common thing to walk along the streets and step over the bodies of dead people lying in the street, their upturned laces streaked with blue and j ellow marks, like Castile soap. It is co common thing that no one thinks about it. r remember going to a house once to make a call, and when I came out an hour later three corpses were lying in the path just outside the door, where the unfortunates had been taken sick and had sat down a moment to rest, never again to get up. There is a funny side to it also. There is some kind of law which makes it obliga" tory for persons upon whose premises corpses are found to pay the expenses of burial. If a person stands in a doorway for a moment to rest?, the inmates will rueh out and shove him into the next lot. I remember once I stepped into a saloon and sat down to escape the heat. The bar-keeper looked Buspiciously at me and asked if I was sick. I replied I felt a little tired. The next thing I knew I was in tbe street. He feared I was going to die on his hands and he would have to pay for my burial. Men were dying all about, but no one took notice of them. Death be came a common l every-day sort of an affair." " Did you not get frightened ?" 11 No. I was careless, just like the rest. I was around about all the time, but never had an attack. We had the disease on shipboard almost continually 1 In a British ship lying alongside the captain's wife, son and daughter #ied,"J; ; ,