Travelers by rail across the Isthmus, as no doubt many ships'
passengers will be in the years to come while their steamer is
being slowly raised and lowered to and from the eighty-five-foot
lake, will see little of the canal,--a glimpse of the Bas Obispo
"cut" at Gamboa and little else from the time they leave Gatun
till they return to the present line at Pedro Miguel station. But
in compensation they will see some wondrous jungle scenery,--a
tangled tropical wilderness with great masses of bush flowers of
brilliant hues, gigantic ferns, countless palm and banana trees,
wonderfully slender arrow-straight trees rising smooth and
branchless more than a hundred feet to end in an immense bouquet
of brilliant purplish-hue blossoms.

"The boss" barely noticed these things. One quickly grows
accustomed to them. Why, Americans who have been down on the Zone
for a year don't know there's a palm-tree on the Isthmus--or at
least they do not remember there were no palm-trees in Keokuk,
Iowa, when they left there.

Along this new-graveled line, still unused except by work-trains,
we rode in our six negro-power car, dropping off in the gravel
each time we caught sight of any species of human being. Every
little way was a gang, averaging some thirty men, distinct in
nationality,--Antiguans shoveling gravel, Martiniques snarling and
quarreling as they wallowed thigh-deep in swamps and pools, a
company of Greeks unloading train-loads of ties, Spaniards
leisurely but steadily grading and surfacing, track bands of
"Spigoties" chopping away the aggressive jungle with their
machetes--the one task at which the native Panamanian (or
Colombian, as many still call themselves) is worth his brass-