egular enumerators of that district.

We left by the 2:10 train. Cascadas and Bas Obispo rolled away behind
us, across the canal I caught a glimpse of the wilderness surrounding
the abode of "Old Fritz," then we entered a to me unknown land. I could
easily have fancied myself a tourist, especially so at Matachin when
"Mac" solemnly attempted to "spring" on me the old tourist hoax of
suicided Chinamen as the derivation of the town's name. Through
Gorgona, the Pittsburg of the Zone with its acres of machine-shops,
rumbled the train and plunged beyond into a deep, if not exactly rank,
endless jungle. The stations grew small and unimportant. Bailamonos and
San Pablo were withering and wasting away, "'Orca L'garto," or the
Hanged Alligator was barely more than a memory, Tabernilla a mere heap
of lumber being tumbled on flatcars bound for new service further
Pacificward. Of Frijoles there remained barely enough to shudder at,
with the collector's nasal bawl of "Free Holys!" and everywhere the
irrepressible tropical greenery was already rushing back to engulf the
pigmy works of man. It seemed criminally wasteful to have built these
entire towns with all the detail and machinery of a well governed and
fully furnished city from police station to salt cellars only to tear
them down again and utterly wipe them out four or five years after
their founding. A forerunner of what, in a few brief years, will have
happened to all the Zone--nay, is not this the way of life itself?

For soon the Spillway at Gatun is to close its gates and all this vast
region will be flooded and come to be Gatun Lake. Villages that were
old when Pizarro began his swine-herding will be wiped out, even this
splendid double-tracked railroad goes the way of the rest, for on
February fifteenth, a bare few days away, it was to be abandoned and
where we were now racing northwestward through brilliant sunshine and
Atlantic breezes would soon be the bottom of a lake over which great
ocean steamers will glide, while far below will be tall palm-trees and
the spreading mangoes, the banana, king of weeds, gigantic ferns
and--well, who shall say what will become of the brilliant parrots, the
monkeys and the jaguars?

For nearly an hour we had not a glimpse of the canal, lost in the
jungle to the right. Then suddenly we burst out upon the growing lake,
now all but licking at the rails beneath us, the Zone city of Gatun
climbing up a hillside on its edge and scattering