But as I looked longer, noting how little by comparison were the
trains I knew to be of regulation U. S. size, how literally tiny
were the scores upon scores of men far down below who were doing
this thing, its significance regained bit by bit its proper
proportions. Train after train-load of the spoil of the "cut"
ground away towards the Pacific; and here man had been digging
steadily, if not always earnestly, since a year before I was born.
The gigantic scene recalled to the mind the "industrial army" of
which Carlyle was prone to preach, with the same discipline and
organization as an army in the field; and every now and then, to
bear out the figure, there burst forth the mighty cannonade, not
of war, but of peace and progress in the form of earth-upheaving
and house-rocking blasts of dynamite, tearing away the solid rock
below at the very feet of the town.

I took to the railroad and struck on further into the unknown
country. Almost before I was well started I found myself in
another town, yet larger than Culebra and with the name "Empire"
in the station building; and nearly every rod of the way between
had been lined with villages of negroes and all breeds and colors
of canal workers. So on again along a broad macadamized highway
that bent and rose through low bushy ridges, past an army encamped
in wood and tin barracks on a hillside, with khaki uniformed
soldiers ahorse and afoot enlivening all the roadway and the
neighboring fields. Never a mile without its town--how different
will all this be when the canal is finished and all this community
is gone to Alaska or has scattered itself again over the face of
the earth, and dense tropical solitude has settled down once more
over the scene.