pts of man to change what she had ordained, and were
determined to drive him to despair. But the attempts were renewed with
dogged persistence, and now the course of the Canal had been fully
protected, and baffled Nature could rage in vain. It was heart-breaking
work, but when Uncle Sam puts his hand to the plough, he doesn't turn
back. Science and pluck, working hand in hand with splendid audacity,
had come out triumphant.

Part of the excavation had been made by hydraulic action. Where the
ground was soft, tremendous streams of water played upon the banks,
washing the dirt away. In other sections, there were enormous steam
shovels, some of them weighing ninety-five tons, and scooping up the
earth, a carload at a time.

"Nice little toys," remarked Dick, as he gazed into the maw of one of
them.

"Right you are," responded Bert, "but they're toys that only giants can
play with."

On the third day of their trip, they reached the Pedro Miguel Locks,
forty miles from the Atlantic. In its general features, it was patterned
after those at Gatun. Here, the vessel, which had been sailing along at
a height of eighty-five feet above sea level after it left Gatun, would
begin to drop toward the Pacific. It would descend thirty feet, then
sail across an artificial lake for a mile and a half, until it reached
the Miraflores Locks, the last place where it would be halted on its trip
to the Western Ocean. Here there were two chambers, each lowering the
ship twenty-seven and a half feet, making a drop of fifty-five feet in
all. From there, for a distance of eight miles, it would pass through a
channel, five hundred feet wide and forty-five deep, until at last it
reached the sea.

And now the whole stupendous plan lay before them as clear as crystal.
As in a panorama, they saw the vessel, as it left the Atlantic and
prepared to climb the backbone of the continent. It would come up the
Bay of Limon to the entrance of the Canal, and there the sailing craft
would fold its wings, the liner would shut off steam. On the wide
expanse of Gatun Lake they would again proceed under their own power.
Through the Canal proper they would be drawn by electric traction
engines, running upon the walls. At Gatun, they would climb, by three
successive steps, to a point eighty-five feet above sea level. Crossing
Gatun Lake, they would pass through the Culebra Cut to the Pedro Miguel
Locks. A downward jump of thirty feet here, another o