and other insects from crawling up, and no one noticed the mosquito "wrigglers" swarming in the stagnant water of these pans, or in the many ornamental bowls of flowers. But when a fever patient was brought into the hospital, the mosquitos bred there would suck the poison from his blood, and quickly spread it through the unscreened wards. Malaria means "bad air," and the French in Panama thought it was caused by the thick white mist that crept at night over the surface of the marshes, and men spoke with terror of this harmless fog and called it "Creeping Johnny." Every evening the Sisters of Charity who acted as nurses—good, pious women, but ignorant and untrained—would close all the doors and windows tight to keep out the terrible Creeping Johnny, and then leave their patients to spend the night without either attendance or fresh air. Too often there was more than one corpse to carry out in the morning.
No proper attention was paid to feeding the force, and there was altogether too little good food, and too much bad liquor. Such a combination is harmful enough anywhere, but in the tropics it is deadly. And there was no lack of other evils to make it deadlier.
"From the time that operations were well under way until the end, the state of things was like the life at 'Red Hoss Mountain,' described by Eugene Field,
<poem>
When the money flowed like likker . . .
With the joints all throwed wide open 'nd no sheriff to
demur!
"Vice flourished. Gambling of every kind, and every other form of wickedness were common day and night.
