Exactly thus should one first see the Great Work, piece-meal,
slowly; unless he will go home with it all in an undigested lump.
The train rolled across a stretch of almost uninhabited country,
with a vast plain of broken rock on the right, plunged
unexpectedly through a short tunnel, and stopped at a station
perched on the edge of a ridge above a small Zone town backed by
some vast structure, above which here and there a huge crane
loomed against the sky of dawn. Another mile and the collectors
were announcing as brazenly as if they challenged the few "Spigs"
on board to correct them, "Peter M'Gill! Peter M'Gill!" We were
already moving on again before I had guessed that by this noise
they designated none other than the famous Pedro Miguel. The sun
rose suddenly as we swung sharply to the left and rumbled across a
girderless bridge. Barely had I time to discover that we were
crossing the great canal itself and to catch a brief glimpse of
the jagged gulf in either direction, before the train had left it
behind, as if the sight of the world-famous channel were not worth
a pause, and was roaring on through a hilly country of perpetual
summer. A peculiarly shaped reservoir sped past on the left, twice
or thrice more the green horizon rose and fell, and at 7:30 we
drew up at the base of Culebra, the Zone capital.
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