of the first real
train I had boarded in months, with the roar of its length over the
smooth and solid road-bed, the deep-voiced, masculine whistle instead
of the painful, puerile screech that had recently assailed my ear, I
all but forgot I was in a foreign land. The fact was recalled by the
passing of the train-guard,--an erect and self-possessed young American
in "Texas" hat, khaki uniform, and leather leggings, striding along the
aisle with a jerking, half-arrogant swing of the shoulders. So,
perhaps, might I too soon be parading across the Isthmus! It was not,
to be sure, exactly the role I had planned to play on the Zone. I had
come rather with the hope of shouldering a shovel and descending into
the canal with other workmen, that I might some day solemnly raise my
right hand and boast, "I helped dig IT." But that was in the callow
days before I had arrived and learned the awful gulf that separates the
sacred white American from the rest of the Canal Zone world. Besides,
had I not always wanted to be a policeman and twirl a club and stalk
with heavy, law-compelling tread ever since I had first stared
speechless upon one of those noble beings on my first trip out into the
world twenty-one years before?

It was not without effort that I rose in time next morning to continue
on the 6:37 from Corozal across another bit of the Zone. Exactly thus
should one first see the Great Work, piece-meal, slowly; unless he will
go home with it all in an undigested lump. The train rolled across a
stretch of almost uninhabited country, with a vast plain of broken rock
on the right, plunged unexpectedly through a short tunnel, and stopped
at a station perched on the edge of a ridge above a small Zone town
backed by some vast structure, above which here and there a huge crane
loomed against the sky of dawn. Another mile and the collectors were
announcing as brazenly as if they challenged the few "Spigs" on board
to correct them, "Peter M'Gill! Peter M'Gill!" We were already moving
on again before I had guessed that by this noise they designated none
other than the famous Pedro Miguel. The sun rose suddenly as we swung
sharply to the left and rumbled across a girderless bridge. Barely had
I time to discover that we were crossing the great canal itself and to
catch a brief glimpse of the jagged gulf in either direction, before
the train had left it behind, as if the sight of the world-famous
channel were not worth a pause, and was roari