CHAPTER XVII.

         ——­“We have view’d it,
          And measur’d it within all, by the scale
          The richest tract of land, love, in the kingdom! 
          There will be made seventeen or eighteeen millions,
          Or more, as’t may be handled!”
                              The Devil is an Ass.

Nobody dressed more like an engineer than Mr. Henry Brierly.  The completeness of his appointments was the envy of the corps, and the gay fellow himself was the admiration of the camp servants, axemen, teamsters and cooks.

“I reckon you didn’t git them boots no wher’s this side o’ Sent Louis?” queried the tall Missouri youth who acted as commissariy’s assistant.

“No, New York.”

“Yas, I’ve heern o’ New York,” continued the butternut lad, attentively studying each item of Harry’s dress, and endeavoring to cover his design with interesting conversation. “’N there’s Massachusetts.”,

“It’s not far off.”

“I’ve heern Massachusetts was a-----of a place.   Les, see, what state’s
Massachusetts in?”

“Massachusetts,” kindly replied Harry, “is in the state of Boston.”

“Abolish’n wan’t it?  They must a cost right smart,” referring to the boots.

Harry shouldered his rod and went to the field, tramped over the prairie by day, and figured up results at night, with the utmost cheerfulness and industry, and plotted the line on the profile paper, without, however, the least idea of engineering practical or theoretical.  Perhaps there was not a great deal of scientific knowledge in the entire corps, nor was very much needed.  They were making, what is called a preliminary survey, and the chief object of a preliminary survey was to get up an excitement about the road, to interest every town in that part of the state in it, under the belief that the road would run through it, and to get the aid of every planter upon the prospect that a station would be on his land.

Mr. Jeff Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for this work.  He did not bother himself much about details or practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the top of one divide to the top of another, and striking “plumb” every town site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route.  In his own language he “just went booming.”

This course gave Harry an opportunity, as he said, to learn the practical details of engineering, and it gave Philip a chance to see the country, and to judge for himself what prospect of a fortune it offered.  Both he and Harry got the “refusal” of more than one plantation as they went along, and wrote urgent letters to their eastern correspondents, upon the beauty of the land and the certainty that it would quadruple in value as soon as the road was finally located.  It seemed strange to them that capitalists did not flock out there and secure this land.