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 from being "shot up." I always kept out of the way as far as possible after the day at Bas Obispo when, standing some hundreds of yards from a blast watching the effect of showers of rocks falling like shells in the river, I heard wild yells, and, looking up, saw a rock as big as a foot-ball sailing toward me. I have heard one can see shells coming and dodge them. I know now that this is so, though I had to drop everything and roll to do it. But I don't like it; and accidents do happen, and there are hospitals all across the Isthmus with men, to whom accidents have happened, in them. But nothing happened to me. I did not get malaria or fever, or bitten or run over. I was very well all the time—and I walked in the sun and worked in the sun, and sat in the swamps and the bottoms of locks and at the edge of the dam, and nothing but drawings happened; but I should not advise others to try these things, nor to get too near steam shovels, which "pick up anything, from an elephant to a red-bug," but sometimes drop a ton rock; nor play around near track-lifters and dirt-train emptiers—for the things are small respecters of persons. But most people do not get hurt, and I never met anyone who wanted to leave; and I believe the threat to send the men home broke the only strike on the Canal.

I did not go to Panama to study engineering—which I know nothing about; or social problems—which I had not time to master; or Central American politics—which we are in for; but to draw the Canal as it is, and the drawings are done.

I was there at the psychological moment, and am glad I went. It is not my business to answer the question: When will the Canal be opened?—though they say it will be open within a year.

Will the dam stand? Those who have built it say so.

Which is better, a sea level or a lock? The lock canal is built.

I did not bother myself about these things, nor about lengths and breadths and heights and depths. I went to see and draw the Canal, and during all the time I was there I was afforded every facility for seeing the construction of the Panama Canal, and from my point of view it is the most wonderful thing in the world; and I have tried to express this in my drawings at the moment before it was opened, for when it is opened, and the water turned in, half the amazing masses of masonry will be beneath the waters on one side and filled in with earth on the other, and the picturesqueness will have vanished. The Culebra Cut will be finer, and from great steamers passing through the gorge, worth going 15,000 miles, as I have done, to see. But I saw it at the right time, and have tried to show what I saw. And it is American—the work of my countrymen.

Joseph Pennell