Peter observed.

"Yes," was the reply, "it is wonderful, even to those who are small cogs
in the great machine, and so it must seem almost supernatural in its
showing of strength to those who look upon it for the first time."

"You belong on the works?" asked Jimmie, gazing at the man with a sort of
awe, as one might look at a man of mighty deeds.

"Yes, I have my part in the work," was the reply, "though it is only a
modest part. I am in the office of the engineer, and frequently come out
at night to note the progress of the big cut."

"It must make a man feel a mile high, to be part of a thing like this,"
Jimmie said, sweeping a hand over the scene. "It makes little old New York
look like thirty cents," he added, with a laugh.

"The work," the stranger said, in a pleasant tone, which gave no
indication of foreign birth "has progressed beyond the expectations of the
most enthusiastic advocate of the canal. When we came here we found about
seven miles of waterway bored into the side of the Isthmus, reaching,
well, about up to the rising slope of Gatun. Beyond this there were
scratches in the soil for about forty miles. There was a notch nicked in
the hills of Culebra--just a nick bearing no resemblance to what you see
before you at this time."

"That was over there where the hills rise up like men watching the lights
and listening to the noise?" asked Jimmie, his imagination thoroughly
stirred by the scene.

"Yes, over there. It would have taken the Frenchmen a century to dig down
to the level where those shovels are working, where those tracks lie. I'm
afraid it took the men they brought here most of the time to bury the
dead. But, after all, they never got in touch with the really big thing."

"I guess that was the Chagres river," Peter said; "I've read something
about that, about the trouble it makes."

"Yes, that was the river," the stranger went on, by this time pretty deep
in the confidence and admiration of the boys. "They found the Chagres
having everything its own way on the uplands, over to the north, there. It
ambled along like a perfect lady in spots, then it twisted its water into
whirling ropes which pulled at the banks and toppled cliffs into the
current."

"Freshets?" asked Jimmie.

"Exactly. When the engineers came they found something worth while. They
found a dismal, soggy-looking ditch which could do things in a single
night. They found crumbling and shaling cliffs which showed the bite o