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 a Martinique or a Haytian.  West Indian “English” alternated with a black patois that smelt at times faintly of French, muscular, bullet-headed negroes appeared slowly and laboriously counting their money in their hats, eagle-nosed Spaniards under the boina of the Pyrenees, Spaniards from Castile speaking like a gatling-gun in action, now and again even a snappy-eyed Andalusian with his s-less slurred speech, slow, laborious Gallegos, Italians and Portuguese in numbers, Colombians of nondescript color, a Slovak who spoke some German, a man from Palestine with a mixture of French and Arabic noises I could guess at, and scattered here and there among the others a Turk who jabbered the lingua franca of Mediterranean ports.  I “got” all who fell into my hands.  Once I dragged forth a Hindu, and shuddered with fear of a first failure.  But he knew a bit of a strange English and I found I recalled six or seven words of my forgotten Hindustanee.