The camp to which we came was a portable city, complete except for its lack of women. It had its artisans, its professional men, its store and workshops, its seat of government and officers, and its policeman, its amusement hall, its work-a-day and social sides. Its main peculiarity was that its boss (for it was like an American city in the possession of that functionary also) had announced that he was going to move it a couple of miles away on the following Sunday. One tent was the stableman's, with a capacious "corral" fenced in near by for the keeping of the pack horses and mules. His corps of assistants was a large one; for, besides the pack-horses that connected the camp with the outer world, he had the keeping of all the "grade-horses," so called--those which draw the stone and dirt carts and the little dump-cars on the false tracks set up on the levels near where "filling" or "cutting" is to be done. Another tent was the blacksmith's. He had a "helper," and was a busy man, charged with all the tool-sharpening, the care of all the horses' feet, and the repairing of all the iron-work of the wagons, cars, and dirt-scrapers. Near by was the harness-man's tent, the shop of the leather-mender. In the centre of the camp, like a low citadel, rose a mound of logs and earth bearing on a sign the single word "Powder," but containing within its great sunken chamber a considerable store of various explosives--giant, black, and Judson powder, and dynamite. [Illustration: DAN DUNN ON HIS WORKS] More tremendous force is used in railroad blasting than most persons imagine. In order to perform a quick job of removing a section of solid mountain, the drill-men, after making a bore, say, twenty feet in depth, begin what they call "springing" it by exploding little cartridges in the bottom of the drill hole until they have produced a considerable chamber there. The average amount of explosive for which they thus prepare a place is 40 or 50 kegs of giant powder and 10 kegs of black powder; but Dunn told me he had seen 280 kegs of black powder and 500 pounds of dynamite used in a single blast in mountain work. Another tent was that of the time-keeper. He journeyed twice a day all over the work, five miles up and five down. On one journey he noted what men were at labor in the forenoon, and on his return he tallied those who were entitled to pay for the second half of the day. Such an official knows the name of every laborer, and, moreover, he knows the pecuniary rating of each man, so that when the workmen stop him to order shoes or trousers, blankets, shirts, tobacco, penknives, or what not, he decides upon his own responsibility whether they have sufficient money coming to them to meet the accommodation.