There before me, for the first
time in--well, many months, spread the Atlantic, the Caribbean
perhaps I should say, seeming very near, so near I almost fancied
I could have thrown a stone to where it began and stretched away
up to the bluish horizon, while the entrance to the canal where
soon great ships will enter poked its way inland to the locks
beside us. Across the tree-tops of the flat jungle, also seeming
close at hand though the railroad takes seven miles--and thirty-
five cents if you are no employee--to reach it, was Colon, the
tops of whose low buildings were plainly visible above the
vegetation. Not many "Zoners," I reflected, catch their first view
of Colon from the veranda of the Administration Building at Gatun.
We had arrived with time to spare. Fully an hour we loafed and
yarned and smoked before a whistle blew and long lines of little
figures began to come up out of the depths and zigzag across the
landscape until soon a line of laborers of every shade known to
humanity began to form, pay-checks in hand; its double head at the
pay-windows on the two sides of the veranda, its tail serpentining
off down the hillside and away nearly to the edge of the mammoth
locks. Packs of the yellow cards of Cristobal district in hand--a
relief to eyes that had been staring for days at the pink ones of
Empire--we lined up like birds of prey just beyond the windows.
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