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
incessantly rumbled and screeched dirt-trains full or empty,
halting before the steam-shovels, that shivered and spouted thick
black smoke as they ate away the rocky hills and cast them in
great giant handsful on the train of one-sided flat-cars that
moved forward bit by bit at the flourish of the conductor's yellow
flag. Steam-shovels that seemed human in all except their mammoth
fearless strength tore up the solid rock with snorts of rage and
the panting of industry, now and then flinging some troublesome,
stubborn boulder angrily upon the cars. Yet they could be dainty
as human fingers too, could pick up a railroad spike or push a
rock gently an inch further across the car.
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