Excerpt from The Conquest of the Isthmus: The Men Who Are Building the Panama Canal Their Daily Lives, Perils, and Adventures HE Panama Canal never will be dug by ma chinery alone. Beyond the steam shovels and the dirt trains, beyond the air-drillers and the dredges, the union of the Atlantic and the Pacific depends upon the men who are giving health, wealth, and life in the battle with the tropical jungle. It is of these men, the khaki heroes of the wilderness, of whom I would tell, the men who have rubbed elbows with death from almost every angle and in almost every guise, in order that the American nation might win the greatest industrial victory in the history of the world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.