Such a task demands a man of illimitable resource and infinite ingenuity, conversant with every phase of civil engineering. At the same time he must possess the happy faculty of being able to organise great armies of men of all nationalities, and in such a manner that he can get the utmost out of them. This is a searching difficulty. The camp of to-day upon a large railway undertaking is a heterogeneous mass of humanity; the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel could not have been more embarrassing. I have lived among the camps of Canada and the United States, and among a hundred men it has been no uncommon circumstance to find representatives of a dozen different tongues. The control of such men is rendered all the more complex for the reason that in the majority of cases they have little or no knowledge of any language but their own. It is not until they have been in one another’s company for several weeks that inter-conversation becomes possible. In addition to this drawback there are always the peculiar troubles incidental to racial and religious prejudices confronting the commander-in-chief, and at times he is hard pressed to preserve order and authority. This trouble is not experienced to any great degree in connection with railway building operations in Great Britain, but abroad the initial difficulties of this character are exasperating to a superlative degree, more especially where reliance has to be made upon native labour. The workmen have to be educated into the use of labour- and time-saving implements. This is no easy matter. The native entertains strong opinions concerning his own ability, and the conversion from the primitive to the up-to-date scientific has to be effected gradually and unconsciously, a task which demands considerable tact and patience. A great amount of time must be expended necessarily in the early days to drill such raw material, but perseverance and an equable temper are the only virtues. In Mexico the railway pioneers found it almost hopeless to impress upon the pæons, as the navvies are called, that to carry ballast in a basket slung upon the back was not to be compared in speed and efficiency with conveyance by small trucks pushed along a tramroad. It was only by carrying out the work themselves in this more modern manner that the engineers could teach them the superior advantage of this method, with its sparing of effort and fatigue. In fact, the only way one can convert the raw native to ideas entirely foreign to his own custom is to show him how he can save himself trouble. Then he will adopt the idea with alacrity.