The Boy With the U. S. Survey Part 3

"It's land the Chippewa Indians ceded to the government to be held in trust and disposed of for their own benefit. It's worth just about nothing now, but when the land is all drained it'll be a mighty valuable section of the State."

"I saw a report on the crops from some of that reclaimed land," said Mitchon, "and it certainly was calculated to make the worked-out Eastern farms sit up. Well, I suppose I must get back, so I'll wish you good luck, Roger, if I don't see you again. You start soon, do you not, Mr.

Field?"

"To-morrow morning."

"So soon? That means hustling."

"No, Mr. Mitchon, everything's ready, I reckon."

"Well," replied the other, "I hope you'll have a pleasant summer, and, Roger, you write and let me know how you like it. Good-by." But he had hardly gone three or four steps from the door when he turned back suddenly and said, "By the way, Roger, there's something I wish you would do for me."

"I'll be only too glad, Mr. Mitchon, if I can," answered the boy readily, eager to show his appreciation of his friend's kindness.

"That's a great snipe country you're going to, and I'm very fond of snipe. I wish you would send me a couple of brace. You organize a snipe-shoot while Roger's with you, won't you, Mr. Field?"

"Well, I'll try, anyway," answered the surveyor, "and we'll do the best we can to give you a feast."

Mitchon nodded and disappeared down the hall, and Field turned to the boy.

"Roger, your name is, isn't it?" he said.

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. Mitchon seems to think you're quite a shot."

"I've done a little shooting, Mr. Field, but I wouldn't like to call myself a crack shot."

"That's all right. Much better not to brag. If Mr. Mitchon wants snipe we'll go out some night and get him so many that he won't know what to do with them."

Roger's eyes glistened at the thought of a night shoot in a country where birds were so plentiful, and he began to congratulate himself that the Survey was just as good as he had expected, and even better.

"Now, son," said his new chief, "what kind of an outfit for the field have you got?"

The boy ran rapidly over the somewhat elaborate stock he had laid in for rough work, and when he came to describe the various shotguns and rifles with which he was provided he dwelt on them in detail, as it had been that part of his outfit in which he had taken the most interest, and in the completeness and excellence of which he felt great pride. But to his annoyance, instead of seeming impressed, the older man chuckled.

"You've got shooting irons enough for a regular stage brigand," he said; "you won't need all that truck, at least as long as you're with me. Take a shotgun, yes, and you can take a revolver along if you want to very much. You've been thinking more about your guns than you have about your boots, though, and you'd better go down and get a pair of river-drivers'

boots this afternoon. Ones something like these." He pulled out of a drawer a special catalogue, and opening it, pa.s.sed it to Roger.

"I've got a regular pair of fisherman's boots," volunteered the boy, "the kind that come 'way up to the hips. I should think they'd be just the thing for swamp work."

The surveyor shook his head,

"No," he said, "that sort of thing won't do. Water and mud will get in those. These others lace up tightly. Of course you'll be wet higher up most of the time, but as long as your feet are tolerably dry, that doesn't matter. Now you get those and do anything else you want,"--then handing him a map--"you'd better look over this too; and meet me at the Union Station to-morrow morning at 8 o'clock, and we'll take the 8.20 for Red Lake."

The trip out to Minnesota was the most enjoyable railroad journey Roger had ever spent. His leader proved as entertaining a companion as a boy need ever meet, and his stories of the wonders of the water power of the United States were more fascinating than any story of adventure.

"I was out in the dry part of South Dakota, one time," he said, "when some people, knowing that I was on the Survey, asked me to locate an artesian well site for them. That was a dry country, I reckon. Why, the little water that was there was so ashamed of itself that it tasted bad.

Well, after I had studied the lay of the land for some time, I told them where to sink the well. It was an unlikely looking spot, I'll admit, but I knew there was water there if they would go down deep enough."

"But how did you know," asked Roger. "Did you use a divining rod?"

"I'm not a seventh son of a seventh son," said the older man with a laugh. "No, indeed, that sort of thing is done to-day by science, not by magic. You see, Roger, water will always be found in large quant.i.ties in porous rocks like sandstones, and none at all will be discovered in what are called impermeable rocks like shale and limestone."

"Why not?" asked the boy, interrupting.

"Because a porous rock is like a sponge, and will hold the water, and an impermeable rock isn't. So, you see, if a thick bed of shale is underlaid by a thick bed of sandstone, you are pretty sure of getting water if you drive a well through the shale."

"But I don't see how that helps," interjected Roger; "it seems to me it would be as hard to tell that there was sandstone so far below ground as to tell that there was water there. You can't see through rock!"

"No, my boy, but if you know the general make-up of the country, and how the rocks lie in the nearest mountains and in the ravines and so forth, you can tell. For example, if a river bed has been cut through the upper shale to the sandstone and through the sandstone to some other rock beneath, you are sure to find that sandstone under that shale everywhere, until you strike a place where geology will show that there has been some other change. In this particular case, the sandstone and the limestone appear in successive layers in the foothills of the Rockies, so that the water and snow from the mountains drains into the sandstone layer, which, being between two strata of harder rocks, can't sink any further down, but must force its way through the pores of that sandstone as far as the stratum runs. Of course things come up to complicate that, but such is the general plan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A LOFTY SPOUTER.

Artesian Well at Woonsocket, South Dakota. Well throws a 3-in. stream to a height of 97 ft.

_Photograph by U.S.G.S._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WATER ENOUGH FOR ALL.

Artesian Well at Lynch, Nebraska. Flows more than 3,000 gallons a minute.

_Photograph by U.S.G.S._]

"Well, as I was saying, the spot that I picked out looked so little like water, that the Burlington railroad people--it was the Burlington that had asked me about it--called in Spearon, who really was the expert on the work. He's an expert all right. He promptly approved the site I had chosen, and told them to go down and they would strike good water at 3,000 feet. At first they laughed at the idea of any man being able to guess at the existence of water, 3,000 feet distant through solid rock, but they knew that Survey statements usually are to be depended on and they began. Some water was struck in an upper layer, but Spearon told them to go on. A dozen times the railroad was about to give up the project as useless, but, being urged, at last they agreed to go down the 3,000 feet, but not an inch further. At 2,920 feet they struck the sandstone, and boring on to 2,980 feet they struck water, and so, within twenty feet of the exact depth advised, they got a well flowing half a million gallons daily under a pressure of 75 pounds."

"A couple of hundred years ago, they would have burned you at the stake for a wizard," commented the boy.

"They would, son, sure enough. But people never stop to think how important this very water is. Why, it is by far the most valuable mineral in the United States!"

"More so than gold?"

"A thousand times! More than coal, too, which is vastly more valuable than gold. The coal's going to give out some day--by the way, remind me to tell you what the Survey's done on the coal question some time. I'd tell you now, but there's a man who got on at the last stop that I want to see," and with a nod, Field rambled to the other end of the car.

With stories and anecdotes of the Survey the time pa.s.sed quickly, and Roger felt quite sorry the next day to find that they had arrived at their journey's end. At the depot, a small frame station, the rest of the members of the party awaited them, with a big lumbering farm wagon, but a pair of the finest horses Roger had ever seen. He won the heart of the teamster immediately by noticing them, and had the satisfaction of knowing that he had made a favorable impression on his future companions for the next few weeks by evincing a ready knowledge of the good points of a horse.

The drive that afternoon through the upper Minnesota country was Roger's first experience of a corduroy road, that abomination of highways, which consists merely of logs laid down horizontally across a trail and some dirt and sand sifted on top of them. In course of time, the dirt all seeps through between the interstices of the logs, and the latter arrange themselves in positions more picturesque than comfortable; which, being ridden over in a springless wagon at a good fast clip, is a more energetic "b.u.mp the b.u.mps" than any amus.e.m.e.nt park has thought of inflicting on a suffering public.

Roger was thoroughly tired that night, though not for the world would he have shown it before his new-made friends; still he found much ado at supper to keep his eyes open and his head from nodding, when suddenly all his senses were galvanized into activity by the word "snipe."

"Boys, I promised Mr. Mitchon," Field was saying, "that we would have a snipe-shoot just as soon as we were able. Now, if we wait until we get right into the thick of the work, no one will want to knock off. Suppose we try a shoot to-night."

"Right you are," "Sure," "Just the thing;" a chorus of approval came from the members of the party and Roger was compelled to chime in with his a.s.sent, and, what was harder, to force an enthusiasm which, owing to his fatigue, he did not feel. Only one dissenting voice was heard, that of the farmer at whose house they were to put up for the night.

"There ain't no snipe round here," he said, "leastwise not this time of year."