322 JS'ational Geographic Magazine. 



stakes every hundred feet, and the leveller follows putting in 

 elevations and cross sections. In this way the work goes on 

 from early morning until nearly dark, stopping about an hour for 

 lunch. 



After the day's work comes the dinner, the table graced with 

 wild hog, or turkey, or venison, or all. After dinner the smoke, 

 then the day's notes are worked up and duplicated and all hands 

 get into their nets. For a moment the countless nocturnal noises 

 of the great forest, enlivened perhaps by the scream of a tiger, 

 or the deep, muffled roar of a puma, fall upon drowsy ears, then 

 follows the sleep that always accompanies hard work and good 

 health, till the bull-voiced howling monkeys set the forest echo- 

 ing with their announcement of the breaking dawn. 



In reconnoissance and preliminary work the experienced engi- 

 neer, is able, in many cases, to avoid obstacles without vitiating 

 the results of his work, but in the final location, in staking out 

 absolute curves and driving tangents thousands of feet long 

 across country, no dodging is possible. 



On the hills and elevated ground the engineer can, compara- 

 tively speaking, get along quite comfortably, his principal annoy- 

 ances being the uneven character of the ground, which compels 

 bim to set his instrument very frequently, and the necessity of 

 felling some gigantic tree every now and then. 



In the valleys and lowlands there is an unceasing round of 

 obstacles. The line may run for some distance over level ground 

 covered with a comparatively open growth, then without warn- 

 ing it encounters the wreck of a fallen tree, and hours are con- 

 sumed hewing a passage through the mass of broken limbs and 

 shattered trunk, all matted and bound together with vines and 

 shrubbery. A little farther on a stream is crossed, and the line 

 may cross and recross four or five times in the next thousand feet. 

 The engineer must either climb down the steep banks, for the 

 streams burrow deep in the stiff clay of these valleys, ford the 

 stream and climb the opposite bank, or he must fall a tree from 

 bank to bank and cross on its slippery trunk twenty or twenty- 

 five feet above the water. 



Either on the immediate bank or in its vicinity is almost cer- 

 tain to be encountered a " saccate " clearing. This may be only 

 ■one or two hundred feet across or it may be a half a mile. In the 

 former case the " saccate " grass will be ten or fifteen feet in 

 lieight and so matted and interwoven with vines and briars 



