and dashed down the abbreviation for "mixed" after the question,
"Married or Single?" Which may have been near enough the truth of
the case, but suggested it was time to quit. So we marked Paraiso
"finished except for recalls" and returned to Empire.

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