over several more. To
the left I caught my first sight of the world-famous locks and dam, and
at 3:30 we descended at the stone station, first mile-post of
permanency, for being out of reach of the coming flood it is built to
stay and shows what Canal Zone stations will be in the years to come.
There remained for me but seven miles of the Isthmus still unseen.

On the cement platform was a great foregathering of the census clans
from all districts, whence we climbed to the broad porch of the
administration building above. There before me, for the first time
in--well, many months, spread the Atlantic, the Caribbean perhaps I
should say, seeming very near, so near I almost fancied I could have
thrown a stone to where it began and stretched away up to the bluish
horizon, while the entrance to the canal where soon great ships will
enter poked its way inland to the locks beside us. Across the tree-tops
of the flat jungle, also seeming close at hand though the railroad
takes seven miles--and thirty-five cents if you are no employee--to
reach it, was Colon, the tops of whose low buildings were plainly
visible above the vegetation. Not many "Zoners," I reflected, catch
their first view of Colon from the veranda of the Administration
Building at Gatun.

We had arrived with time to spare. Fully an hour we loafed and yarned
and smoked before a whistle blew and long lines of little figures began
to come up out of the depths and zigzag across the landscape until soon
a line of laborers of every shade known to humanity began to form,
pay-checks in hand; its double head at the pay-windows on the two sides
of the veranda, its tail serpentining off down the hillside and away
nearly to the edge of the mammoth locks. Packs of the yellow cards of
Cristobal district in hand--a relief to eyes that had been staring for
days at the pink ones of Empire--we lined up like birds of prey just
beyond the windows. As the first laborer passed this, one--nay, several
of us pounced upon him, for all plans we had laid to line up and take
turns were thus quickly overthrown and wild competition soon reigned.
From then on each dived in to snatch his prey and, dragging him to the
nearest free space, began in some language or other: "Where d'ye live?"

That was the overwhelming problem,--in what language to address each
victim. Barter, speaking only his nasal New Jersey, took to picking out
negroes, and even then often turned away in disgust when he landed