eafening machines, all day I dodged
switching, snorting trains, clambered by steep rocky paths, or ladders
from one level to another, howling above the roar of the "cut" the
time-worn questions, straining my ear to catch the answer. Many a negro
did not know the meaning of the word "census," and must have it
explained to him in words of one syllable. Many a time I climbed to
some lofty rock ledge lined with drills and, gesticulating like a
semaphore in signal practice, caught at last the wandering attention of
a negro, to shout sore-throated above the incessant pounding of
machines and the roaring of the Atlantic breeze:

"Hello, boy! Census taken yet?"

A long vacant stare, then at last, perhaps, the answer:

"Oh, yes sah, boss."

"When and where?"

"In Spanish Town, Jamaica, three year ago, sah."

Which was not an attempt to be facetious but an answer in all
seriousness. Why should not one census, like one baptism, suffice for a
life-time? It was fortunate that enumerators were not accustomed to
carry deadly weapons.

Quick changes from negro to Spanish gangs demonstrated beyond all
future question how much more native intelligence has the white man.
Rarely did I need to ask a Spaniard a question twice, still less ask
him to repeat the answer. His replies came back sharp and swift as a
pelota from a cesta. West Indians not only must hear the question an
average of three times but could seldom give the simplest information
clearly enough to be intelligible, though ostensibly speaking English.
A Spanish card one might fill out and be gone in less time than the
negro could be roused from his racial torpor. Yet of the Spaniards on
the Zone surely seventy per cent, were wholly illiterate, while the
negroes from the British Weat Indies, thanks to their good fortune in
being ruled over by the world's best colonist, could almost invariably
read and write; many of those shoveling in the "cut" have been trained
in trigonometry.

Few are the "Zoners" now who do not consider the Spaniard the best
workman ever imported in all the sixty-five years from the railroad
surveying to the completion of the canal. The stocky, muscle-bound
little fellows come no longer to America as conquistadores, but to
shovel dirt. And yet more cheery, willing workers, more law-abiding
subjects are scarcely to be found. It is unfortunate we could not have
imported Spaniards for all the canal work; even they have naturally
learned some "soldier