Day after day it was the same--everything, including government hotels and labor trains, open to me. The only things to look out for were the blasts, the slips of dirt in the cut, and the trains, which rushed and switched about without any reference to those who might get in front of them. If one got run over, as was not usual; or blown up, which was unusual; or malaria, which few escaped among the workmen, there were plenty of hospitals, lots of nurses and sufficient doctors. Each railroad switch was attended by a little darkey with a big flag; of one of whom it was said he was seen to be asleep, with his head on the rails one day. The engineer of an approaching dirt train actually pulled up, and he was kicked awake and asked why he was taking a nap there. The boy replied he was "'termined no train go by, boss, widout me knowin' it"; and of another who, awaking suddenly and seeing half a train past his switch, pulled it open and wrecked all the trains, tracks and switches within a quarter of a mile; or the third, a Jamaican, a new hand, who, being told he was not to let a train go by, promptly signalled a locomotive to come on, and when he was hauled up, smilingly said: "Dat wan't no train wat yer tole me to stop; dat's a enjine." Drawing had other interesting episodes connected with it, as when I sat at work in Culebra Cut the leading man of a file of niggers, carrying on his head a wooden box, would approach, stop beside me and look at the drawing. As I happened to look up I would notice the box was labelled, _Explosives, Highly dangerous_. Then, with his hands in his pockets, he and the rest of the gang would stumble along over the half-laid ties, slippery boulders and through the mud, trying to avoid the endless trains and balance the boxes on their heads at the same time. I must say, when I read the legend on the box the sensation was peculiar. They tell you, too, that when President Taft came down to the Cut all dynamiting gangs were ordered out; but one gang of blacks was forgotten, and as the train with the President and Colonel Goethals in it passed, the leader cheered so hard that he dropped his box, which somehow didn't go off. It was interesting, too, when one had been working steadily for some time, to find oneself surrounded, on getting up, by little flags, to announce that the whole place had been mined and should not be approached; or to find oneself entangled in a network of live wires ready to touch off the blasts from hundreds of yards away, and to remember that I was behind a boulder about to be blown to pieces, and might be overlooked; or to be told I had better get out, as they were ready to blast, after a white man had got done chucking from one rock, to a black man on another, sticks of melanite, as the easiest way of getting them to him; or ramming in, with long poles, charges so big that trains, steam shovels and tracks had to be moved to keep them