I could easily have fancied myself a tourist,
especially so at Matachin when "Mac" solemnly attempted to
"spring" on me the old tourist hoax of suicided Chinamen as the
derivation of the town's name. Through Gorgona, the Pittsburg of
the Zone with its acres of machine-shops, rumbled the train and
plunged beyond into a deep, if not exactly rank, endless jungle.
The stations grew small and unimportant. Bailamonos and San Pablo
were withering and wasting away, "'Orca L'garto," or the Hanged
Alligator was barely more than a memory, Tabernilla a mere heap of
lumber being tumbled on flatcars bound for new service further
Pacificward. Of Frijoles there remained barely enough to shudder
at, with the collector's nasal bawl of "Free Holys!" and
everywhere the irrepressible tropical greenery was already rushing
back to engulf the pigmy works of man. It seemed criminally
wasteful to have built these entire towns with all the detail and
machinery of a well governed and fully furnished city from police
station to salt cellars only to tear them down again and utterly
wipe them out four or five years after their founding. A
forerunner of what, in a few brief years, will have happened to
all the Zone--nay, is not this the way of life itself?
For soon the Spillway at Gatun is to close its gates and all this
vast region will be flooded and come to be Gatun Lake.
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