thing from the general wreck, and
the company closed with infamy and scandal.

Now we have taken hold of the job. We have difficulties with our own
people, of course. I haven't a doubt that it will take a little longer
and cost a little more than men now appreciate, but I believe that
the work is being done with a very high degree both of efficiency
and honesty; and I am immensely struck by the character of American
employees who are engaged, not merely in superintending the work, but in
doing all the jobs that need skill and intelligence. The steam shovels,
the dirt trains, the machine shops, and the like, are all filled with
American engineers, conductors, machinists, boiler-makers, carpenters.
From the top to the bottom these men are so hardy, so efficient, so
energetic, that it is a real pleasure to look at them. Stevens, the head
engineer, is a big fellow, a man of daring and good sense, and burly
power. All of these men are quite as formidable, and would, if it were
necessary, do quite as much in battle as the crews of Drake and
Morgan; but as it is, they are doing a work of infinitely more lasting
consequence. Nothing whatever remains to show what Drake and Morgan
did. They produced no real effect down here, but Stevens and his men are
changing the face of the continent, are doing the greatest engineering
feat of the ages, and the effect of their work will be felt while our
civilization lasts. I went over everything that I could possibly go
over in the time at my disposal. I examined the quarters of married and
single men, white men and negroes. I went over the ground of the Gatun
and La Boca dams; went through Panama and Colon, and spent a day in
the Culebra cut, where the great work is being done. There the huge
steam-shovels are hard at it; scooping huge masses of rock and gravel
and dirt previously loosened by the drillers and dynamite blasters,
loading it on trains which take it away to some dump, either in the
jungle or where the dams are to be built. They are eating steadily into
the mountain, cutting it down and down. Little tracks are laid on
the side-hills, rocks blasted out, and the great ninety-five ton
steam-shovels work up like mountain howitzers until they come to where
they can with advantage begin their work of eating into and destroying
the mountainside. With intense energy men and machines do their task,
the white men supervising matters and handling the machines, while the
tens of thousands of