" I slid down the face of government-made
cliffs on the seat of my commissary breeches. I fought my way up
again to stalk through long lines of men picking away at the dizzy
edge of sheer precipices. I rolled down in the sand and rubble of
what threatened to develop into "slides." I crawled under snorting
steam-shovels to drag out besooted negroes--negroes so besooted I
had to ask them their color--while dodging the gigantic swinging
shovel itself, to say nothing of "dhobie" blasts and rocks of the
size of drummers' trunks that spilled from it as it swung. I
climbed up into the quivering monster itself to interrupt the
engineer at his levers, to shout at the craneman on his beam. I
sprang aboard every train that was not running at full speed,
walking along the running-board into the cab; if not to "get" the
engineer at least to gain new life from his private ice-water
tank. I scrambled over tenders and quarter-miles of "Lidgerwood
flats" piled high with broken rock and earth, to scream at the
American conductor and his black brakemen, often to find myself,
by the time I had set down one of them, carried entirely out of my
district, to Pedro Miguel or beyond the Chagres, and have to "hit
the grit" in "hobo" fashion and catch something back to the spot
where I left off. In short I poked into every corner of the "cut"
known to man, bawling in the November-first voice of a
presidential candidate to everything in trousers:
"Eh! 'Ad yer census taken yet?"
And what was my reward? From the northern edge of Empire to where
the "cut" sinks away into the Chagres and the low, flat country
beyond, I enrolled--just thirteen persons.
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