One by one our fellow-enumerators had dropped by the wayside, some by mutual agreement, some without any agreement whatever.  Renson was now relieved from census duty, to his great joy, there remained but four of us,—­“the boss” and “Mac” in the office, “Scotty” and I outside.  A deep conference ensued and, as if I had not had good luck enough already, it was decided that we two should go through the “cut” itself.  It was like offering us a salary to view all the Great Work in detail, for virtually all the excavation of any importance on the Zone lay within the confines of our district.

So one day “Scotty” and I descended at the girderless railroad bridge and, taking each one side of the canal, set out to canvass its every nook and cranny.  The canal as it then stood was about the width of two city blocks, an immense chasm piled and tumbled with broken rock and earth, in the center a ditch already filled with grimy water, on either side several levels of rough rock ledges with sheer rugged stone faces; for 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