the hills were being cut away in layers each far above the other.
High above us rose the jagged walls of the "cut" with towns hanging by
their fingernails all along its edge, and ahead in the abysmal, smoky
distance the great channel gashed through Culebra mountain.

The different levels varied from ten to twenty feet one above the
other, each with a railroad on it, back and forth along which
incessantly rumbled and screeched dirt-trains full or empty, halting
before the steam-shovels, that shivered and spouted thick black smoke
as they ate away the rocky hills and cast them in great giant handsful
on the train of one-sided flat-cars that moved forward bit by bit at
the flourish of the conductor's yellow flag. Steam-shovels that seemed
human in all except their mammoth fearless strength tore up the solid
rock with snorts of rage and the panting of industry, now and then
flinging some troublesome, stubborn boulder angrily upon the cars. Yet
they could be dainty as human fingers too, could pick up a railroad
spike or push a rock gently an inch further across the car. Each was
run by two white Americans, or at least what would prove such when they
reached the shower-bath in their quarters--the craneman far out on the
shovel arm, the engineer within the machine itself with a labyrinth of
levers demanding his unbroken attention. Then there was of course a
gang of negroes, firemen and the like, attached to each shovel.

All the day through I climbed and scrambled back and forth between the
different levels, dodging from one track to another and along the rocky
floor of the canal, needing eyes and ears both in front and behind, not
merely for trains but for a hundred hidden and unknown dangers to keep
the nerves taut. Now and then a palatial motorcar, like some rail-road
breed of taxi, sped by with its musical insistent jingling bells,
usually with one of the countless parties of government guests or
tourists in spotless white which the dry season brings. Dirt-trains
kept the right of way, however, for the Work always comes first at
Panama. Or it might be the famous "yellow car" itself with members of
the Commission. Once it came all but empty and there dropped off
inconspicuously a man in baggy duck trousers, a black alpaca coat of
many wrinkles; and an unassuming straw hat, a white-haired man with
blue--almost babyish blue-eyes, a cigarette dangling from his lips as
he strolled about with restless yet quiet energy. There has