was being pushed forward to their haunches. The raw earth-ends
were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses
climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of
stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of
hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and
roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the
dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat
cribs of railway~sleepers, filled within and daubed without with
mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted up.
In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead crane
travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of
iron into place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant
grunts in the timberyard. Riveters by the hundred swarmed about
the lattice side-work and the iron roof of the railway line hung
from invisible staging under the bellies of the girders,
clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on the
overhang
of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the spurts of
flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale
yellow in the sun's glare. East and west and north and south the
construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the
embankments, the piled trucks of brown and white stone banging
behind them till the side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar
and a grumble a few thousand tons' more material were flung out
to hold the river in place. Findlayson, C. E., turned on his
trolley and looked over the face of the country that he had
changed for seven miles around. Looked back on the humming
village of five thousand work-men; up stream and down, along the
vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers,
lessening in the haze; overhead to the guard-towers -and only he