A new railway terminus has been built. The trains which run each way, three times daily, across the isthmus to Panama, carry passengers and baggage to that city and to the numerous wayside stations along the route. They are always crowded with employees of the Canal Commission, and travellers on their way, via the Pacific port, to countries on the western side of South America. Along the route of the canal, which follows closely the line of the railway, a busy scene of activity is presented. Only those who have travelled backwards and forwards over the line many times, and have branched off along the numerous side tracks that have been laid to carry the excavated earth to convenient or necessary dumping grounds, can be properly impressed with the magnitude and difficulty of the operations, as evidenced not only by the existing works, but by continual reminders of the French enterprise, in hundreds of disused and obsolete trucks, engines and dredgers which lie half-sunk in deep morasses or overgrown with dense vegetation. The towns and villages that have sprung up along the line of the canal have grown rapidly during the last two or three years, for although the French had erected over two thousand buildings during their occupation, the new owners have added so largely to that number that such towns as Empire, Culebra, Las Cascadas, and Gatum are quite important and considerable centres of industry, with schools, hotels, court-houses and large dwelling houses scattered through them. The headquarters of the Canal Commission are at Culebra, and it is here also that the largest excavation work is going on. The hill of Culebra (which means a “serpent”) is about thirty-six miles from Colon and ten from Panama, and it was at this point that the two French companies concentrated their efforts. The canal in course of construction, and now nearing completion, is a high-level one, the amount of excavation being considerably less than that required if De Lesseps’ original plan of a sea-level route had been adhered to.