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The admirable organization of the contractors was something wonderful. The grading work was practically all done by sub-contractors, Messrs. Langdon, Sheppard & Co. confining themselves to putting in the supplies and doing the bridge work, surfacing, and track-laying.
On July 17 the track reached station 7,000, making however up to this time but about 50 miles of track-laying, including that laid on the old grade; but large forces were put on to surfacing, and the track already laid was put in excellent condition for getting material to the front. The weather from this until the freezing-up was all that could be desired.
The finest place I saw in Canton was the mortuary where the dead bodies of wealthy Chinamen are kept until burial. The handsome coffins I saw ranged in value from $1400 to $2700 Mexican, or half these amounts American money. The lacquered surfacing accounts for the high cost. Nor are these departed Celestials kept here for a few days only.
"We're spending money like water; paying anything that's asked; and even then the men come and go like a torchlight procession. But we are keeping the surfacing gangs neck-full the entire length of the line, and Leckhard has already organized his regular train service over the first hundred miles.
In this district there are three types of road mail roads, winter roads, and trails. The mail roads are cleared about eighty feet wide through the woods. An attempt has been made at surfacing and ditching, and the bad places corduroyed. The winter roads are cleared about twenty feet wide. Wherever possible they go through forestry clearings, swamps and lakes, or down rivers.
On the bottom are thrown heavy blocks of stone through which the water can filter, and occasionally there is a little drain to carry it off. Upon this is a layer of smaller stones, and then still smaller, until the surfacing is reached, which is macadam of pounded slate, mixed with gravel and stone.
The preceding notes show that the natives of the Gold Coast, and of West Africa generally, are adepts at procuring their gold by 'surfacing, washing with the calabash or wooden bowl the rich alluvial formations that underlie the top-soil. This is the rudest form of machinery, preceding in California the cradle, the torn, and the sluice.
Shovel gangs, track gangs, surfacing gangs, dynamite gangs, gangs doing everything imaginable with shovel and pick and crowbar, gangs down on the floor of the canal, gangs far up the steep walls of cut rock, gangs stretching away in either direction till those far off look like upright bands of the leaf-cutting ants of Panamanian jungles; gangs nearly all, whatever their nationality, in the blue shirts and khaki trousers of the Zone commissary, giving a peculiar color scheme to all the scene.
Tyler, of New York, a comrade who united remarkable bravery to the kindest of hearts, followed close behind me, also evidently bound for Poste C. German bullets, fired wildly from the ridge of The Wood over the French trenches, sang across the Montauville valley, lodging in the trees of Puvenelle behind us with a vicious tspt; shells broke here and there on the stretch leading to the Quart-en-Réserve, throwing the small rocks of the road surfacing wildly in every direction.
Dock looks pretty tough, John must have been out surfacing track, ain't been wiped in Lord knows when, oiled a good deal, but nary a wipe, jacket rusted and streaked, tire double flanged, valves blowin', packing down, don't seem to steam, maybe's had poor coal, or is all limed up. He's got to go through the back shop 'efore the old man'll ever let him into the roundhouse.
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