ynamite and dry-goods boxes and
jungle reeds in little scattered patches of clearing. Some of these
hills have been cut half away for the new line--great generous "cuts,"
for to the giant 90-ton steam-shovels a few hundred cubic yards of
earth more or less is of slight importance. All else is virtually
impenetrable jungle. Travelers by rail across the Isthmus, as no doubt
many ships' passengers will be in the years to come while their steamer
is being slowly raised and lowered to and from the eighty-five-foot
lake, will see little of the canal,--a glimpse of the Bas Obispo "cut"
at Gamboa and little else from the time they leave Gatun till they
return to the present line at Pedro Miguel station. But in compensation
they will see some wondrous jungle scenery,--a tangled tropical
wilderness with great masses of bush flowers of brilliant hues,
gigantic ferns, countless palm and banana trees, wonderfully slender
arrow-straight trees rising smooth and branchless more than a hundred
feet to end in an immense bouquet of brilliant purplish-hue blossoms.

"The boss" barely noticed these things. One quickly grows accustomed to
them. Why, Americans who have been down on the Zone for a year don't
know there's a palm-tree on the Isthmus--or at least they do not
remember there were no palm-trees in Keokuk, Iowa, when they left there.

Along this new-graveled line, still unused except by work-trains, we
rode in our six negro-power car, dropping off in the gravel each time
we caught sight of any species of human being. Every little way was a
gang, averaging some thirty men, distinct in nationality,--Antiguans
shoveling gravel, Martiniques snarling and quarreling as they wallowed
thigh-deep in swamps and pools, a company of Greeks unloading
train-loads of ties, Spaniards leisurely but steadily grading and
surfacing, track bands of "Spigoties" chopping away the aggressive
jungle with their machetes--the one task at which the native Panamanian
(or Colombian, as many still call themselves) is worth his brass-check.
Every here and there we caught labor's odds and ends, diminutive
"water-boys," likewise of varying nationality, a negro switch-boy
dozing under the bit of shelter he had rigged up of jungle ferns,
frightening many a black laborer speechless as we pounced upon him
emerging from his "soldiering" in the jungle; occasionally even a
native bushman on his way to market from his palm-thatched home
generations old back in the bush, who