nadian Northwest Mounted Police, keep the four hundred square miles of the Canal Zone as peaceful as a New England village on Sunday morning. All the officers and first-class troopers of this force are Americans, and about seventy-five second-class troopers are Jamaican negroes, who have served in the British West Indian Constabulary, or the British West Indian Regiment. These are very fine, soldierly men, far more intelligent than the average Jamaican. They are used to police their own countrymen on the Isthmus, which they do with much more tact and less friction than an American could.
Any one who mistakes the Canal Zone of to-day for a lawless frontier community is more than likely to find himself making roads with the rest of the chain-gang. There are three United States Circuit Courts on the
SEAL OF THE CANAL
ZONE.
From Official Handbook.
Isthmus, and the three justices sit together as the Supreme Court of the Canal Zone. As a rule, they sit without a jury, for most of the laborers come from countries where jury trials are unknown. Interpreters skilled in many tongues are as much needed as in the police courts of New York. A code of laws has been put in force, to take the place of the clumsy and cruel old Spanish laws we found when we came to the Isthmus. A penitentiary at Culebra contains such prisoners as are not working on the roads. If a convict breaks jail, there is no place for him to run to, for on each side of the
