The Nation: The Canal Zone: On Edge

The 8th century Caliph Harun al-Rashid once took a Heraclean slave girl into his harem. So homesick was she that the Caliph built for her an exact replica of Heraclea, her native Greek city, at her exile on the banks of the Euphrates. To many the American enclave of the Panama Canal Zone seems such a Heraclea, almost a parody of country-club America, an elegant company town set down in the Panamanian jungle. But that picture is something of at stereotype, as TIME'S Bernard Diederich discovered when he visited the zone last week. Diederich s report:

The rains have begun. Balboa is...

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