Now and then the boss is a stony-eyed American with a black cigar clamped between his teeth.  More often he is of the same nationality as the workers, quite likely from the same town, who jabbers a little imitation English.  Which is one of the reasons why a force of “time inspectors” is constantly dodging in and out over the job, time-book and pencil in hand, lest some fellow-townsman of the boss be earning his $1.50 a day under the shade of a tree back in the jungle.  Here are Basques in their boinas, preferring their native “Euscarra” to Spanish; French “niggers” and English “niggers” whom it is to the interest of peace and order to keep as far apart as possible; occasionally a few sunburned blond men in a shovel gang, but they prove to be Teutons or Scandinavians; laborers of every color and degree—­except American laborers, more than conspicuous by their absence.  For the American negro is an untractable creature in large numbers, and the caste system that forbids white Americans from engaging in common labor side by side with negroes is to be expected in an enterprise of which the leaders are not only military men but largely southerners, however many may be shivering in the streets of Chicago or roaming hungrily through the byways of St. Louis.  It is well so, perhaps.  None of us who feels an affection for the Zone would wish to see its atmosphere lowered from what it is to the brutal depths of our railroad construction camps in the States.

The attention of certain state legislatures might advantageously be called to the Zone Spaniard’s drinking-cup.  It is really a tin can on the end of a long stick, cover and all.  The top is punched sieve-like that the water may enter as it is dipped in the bucket with which the water-boy strains along.  In the bottom is a single small hole out of which spurts into the drinker’s mouth a little stream of water as he holds it high above his head, as once he drank wine from his leather bota in far-off Spain.  Many a Spanish gang comes entirely from the same town, notably Salamanca or Avila.  I set them to staring and chattering by some simple remark about their birthplace:  “Fine view from the Paseo del Rastro, eh?” “Does the puente romano still cross the river?” But I had soon to cease such personalities, for picks and shovels lay idle as long as I remained in sight and Uncle Sam was the loser.

So many were the gangs that I advanced barely a half-mile during this first day and, lost in my work, forgot the hour until it was suddenly recalled by the insistent, strident tooting of whistles that forewarns the setting-off of the dynamite charges from the little red electric boxes along the edge of the “cut.”  I turned back toward Paraiso and, all but stumbling over little red-wound wires everywhere on the ground, dodging in and out, running forward, halting or suddenly retreating, I worked my way gradually forward, while all the world about me was upheaving and spouting and belching forth to the heavens, as if I had been