The name Pedro Miguel is given to this lock because the French began operations there on the feast day of St. Peter Michael, whose name in Spanish is applied to the spot. An omniscient gentleman on the train once assured me that the name came from a Spanish hermit who long lived on the spot in the odor of sanctity--and divers other odors if the haunts of the hermits I have visited elsewhere were any criterion. Errors of fact, however, are common on the zone. They still laugh about a congressman who, on Gatun dam, struck an attitude and exclaimed with feeling--“At last then I stand in the far-famed Culebra Cut”! which spot was a trifle more than thirty miles away. From the lower lock at Miraflores the canal describes a practically straight course to the Pacific Ocean at Balboa, about 4¹⁄₂ miles. The channel is continued out to sea about four miles further. All the conditions of the Pacific and Oriental trade give assurance that at Balboa will grow the greatest of all purely tropical ports. To it the commerce of the whole Pacific coast of North America, and of South America as far south at least as Lima, will irresistibly flow. To it will also come the trade of Japan, Northern China and the Philippines, seeking the shortest route to Europe or to our own Atlantic coast. It is true that much of this trade will pass by, but the ships will enter the Canal after long voyages in need of coal and in many cases of refitting. The government has anticipated this need by providing for a monster dry dock, able to accommodate the 1000 foot ships yet to be built, and establishing repair shops fit to build ships as well as to repair them. In 1913, however, when this trip through the Canal under construction was made, little sign of this coming greatness was apparent. The old dock of the Pacific Mail and a terminal pier of the Panama Railroad afforded sufficient dockage for the steamships of which eight or ten a week cleared or arrived. The chief signs of the grandeur yet to come were the never-ceasing dirt trains rumbling down from Culebra Cut and discharging their loads into the sea in a great fan shaped “fill” that will afford building sites for all the edifices of the future Balboa, however great it may become. Looking oceanward you see the three conical islands on which the United States is already erecting its fortifications. [Illustration: THE GREAT FILL AT BALBOA WHERE THE CULEBRA SPOIL IS DUMPED]