That portion runs through the wilderness a mile or more back from the canal, through jungled hills so dense with vegetation one could only make one's way through it with the ubiquitous machete of the native jungle-dweller, except where tiny trails appear that lead to squatters' thatched huts thrown together of tin, dynamite and dry-goods boxes and jungle reeds in little scattered patches of clearing. Some of these hills have been cut half away for the new line—great generous "cuts," for to the giant 90-ton steam-shovels a few hundred cubic yards of earth more or less is of slight importance. All else is virtually impenetrable jungle. 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-check. Every here and there we caught labor's odds and ends, diminutive "water-boys," likewise of varying nationality, a negro switch-boy dozing under the bit of shelter he had rigged up of jungle ferns, frightening many a black laborer speechless as we pounced upon him emerging from his "soldiering" in the jungle; occasionally even a native bushman on his way to market from his palm-thatched home generations old back in the bush, who has scarcely noticed yet that the canal is being dug, fell into our hands and was inexorably set down in spite of all protest unless he could prove beyond question that he had already been "taken" or lived beyond the Zone line.
Thus we scribbled incessantly on, even through the noon hour, dragging gangs one by one away from their tasks, shaking laborers out of the brief after-lunch siesta in a patch of shade. "The boss" was hampered by having only two languages where ten were needed. In the early afternoon he went on to Paraiso to feed himself and the traction power, while I held the fort. Soon after rain fell, a sort of advance agent of the rainy season, a sudden tropical downpour that ran in rivulets down across the pink card-boards and my victims. Yet strange to note, the writing of the medium soft pencil remained as clear and unsmudged as in the driest weather, and so clean a rain was it that it did not even soil my white cotton shirt. I continued unheeding, only to note with surprise a few minutes later that the sun was shining on the dense green jungle about me as brilliantly as ever and that I was dry again as when I had set out in the morning.
"The boss" returned, and when I had eaten the crackers and the bottle of pink lemonade he brought, we pushed on toward the Pacific. Till at length in mid-afternoon we came to the top of the descent to Pedro Miguel and knew that the end of our district was at hand. So powerful was the breeze from the Atlantic that our six man-power engine sweated profusely as they toiled against it, even on the downgrade of the return to Empire.
To "Scotty" had been assigned my Empire "recalls" and I had been given a new and virgin territory,—namely, the town of Paraiso. It lies "somewhat back from the village street," that is, the P.R.R. Indeed, trains do not deign to notice its existence except on Sundays. But there is the temporary bridge over the canal which few engineers venture to "snake her across" at any great speed, and the enumerator housed in Empire need not even be a graduate "hobo" to be able to drop off there a bit after seven in the morning and prance away up the chamois path into the town.
Wherever on the Zone you espy a town of two-story skeleton screened buildings scattered over hills, with winding gravel roads and trees and flowers between there you may be sure live American "gold" employees. Yet somehow the Canal Commission had dodged the monotony you expected, somehow they have broken up the grim lines that make so dismal the best-intentioned factory town. There are hints that the builders have heard somewhere of the science of landscape gardening. At times these same houses are deceiving, for all I. C. C. buildings bear a strong family resemblance, and it is only at the door that you know whether it is bachelors' quarters, a family residence, or the supreme court.
From the outside world "P'reeso" scarcely draws a glance of attention; but once in it you find a whole Zone town with all the accustomed paraphernalia of I. C. C. hotel and commissary, hospital and police station, all ruled over and held in check by the famous "Colonel" in command of the latter. Moreover Paraiso will some day come again into her own, when the "relocation" opens and brings her back on the main line, while proud Culebra and haughty Empire, stranded on a railless shore of the canal, will wither and waste away and even their broad macadamed roads will sink beneath a second-growth jungle.
Renson had come to lend assistance. He set to work among the negro cabins, the upper gallery seats of Paraiso's amphitheater of hills, for Renson had been a free agent for more than a month now and was not exactly in a condition to interview American housewives. My own task began down at the row of inhabited box-cars, and so on through shacks and tenements with many Spanish laborers' wives. Then toward noon the labor-train screamed in, with two "gold" coaches and many open cattle-cars with long benches jammed with sweaty workmen, easily six hundred men in the six cars, who swept in upon the town like a flood through a suddenly opened sluiceway as the train barely paused and shrieked away again.
Renson and I dashed for the laborers' mess-halls, where hundreds of sun-bronzed foreigners, divided only as to color, packed pell-mell around a score of wooden tables heavily stocked with rough and tumble food—yet so different from the old French catch as catch can days when each man owned his black pot and toiled all through the noon-hour to cook himself an unsanitary lunch. We jotted them down at express speed, with changes of tongue so abrupt that our heads were soon reeling, and in the place where our minds should have been sounded only a confused chaotic uproar like a wrangling within the covers of a polyglot dictionary. Then suddenly I landed a Russian! It was the final straw. I like to speak Spanish, I can endure the creaking of Turks attempting to talk Italian, I can bend an ear to the excruciating "French" of Martinique negroes, I have boldly faced sputtering Arabs, but I will NOT run the risk of talking Russian. It was the second and last case during my census days when I was forced to call for interpretative assistance.