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Lodge, our surveyor, and Thomas Grant with the Jacob-staff, the four chain-bearers with the chain, and Corporal Calhawn, all standing stock still and gazing up the slope toward us. The next moment Grant dropped his Jacob-staff, turned and ran; the chain-men flung away their implements, and Mr.

I want you to survey a railroad from Carson City westward to a certain point! When the legislature meets I will have the necessary bill passed and the remuneration arranged." "What, a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains?" "Well, then, survey it eastward to a certain point!" He converted them into surveyors, chain-bearers and so on, and turned them loose in the desert.

We buried poor Traverse, and his chain-bearers, near the spring, using one of the same natural hollows in the earth as that in which we had interred the hunter. On a search, it was ascertained that their arms and ammunition had been carried off, and that the pockets of the dead men had been rifled.

Spread yourselves, therefore, chain-bearers, and look for blazed trees; for, put me anywhere on the boundaries, and I'll answer for finding any oak, beech, or maple, that is mentioned in the corners." As soon as this order was received, all the surveyor's men obeyed, opening the order of their march, and spreading themselves in a way to extend their means of observing materially.

The chain-bearers followed, continually bending and rising, the recurrent genuflections resembling the fervors of some religious rite. The chain rustled sibilantly among the dead leaves, and was ever and anon drawn out to its extremest length. Then the dull clank of the links was silent. "Stick!" called out the young mountaineer in the rear. "Stuck!" responded his comrade ahead.

Our decision was soon reached, and our preparations made. By packing and shouldering his knapsack, and arming himself, each man would be ready; though a short delay grew out of the absence of Traverse and his chain-bearers. We wrote a letter, however, explaining the reason of our intended absence, promising to return as soon as the operations in front of Ty should be terminated.

"Beats my time!" as they stumbled and scuttled alongside the acolytes of the Compass, who bowed down and rose up at every length of the chain. Suddenly a cry from the chain-bearers. "Out!" Stillness ensued. The surveyor stopped to register the "out."

As for the divine, he declared that he saw a suitable 'field' for his missionary labour where he was; while, it was easy to see, that he questioned if there were fields of any sort, where we were going. Our party, on quitting Ravensnest, consisted of Dirck and myself, Guert, Mr. Traverse, the surveyor, three chain-bearers, Jaap or Yaap, Guert's man, Pete, and one woodsman or hunter.

At the foot of a huge oak, that grew a few yards from the fatal saplings, we found the two wooden, covered pails in which we knew Pete had been accustomed to carry food to Mr. Traverse and the chain-bearers. They were empty, but whether the provisions they unquestionably had contained fell to the share of those for whom they were intended, or to that of the captors, we never learned.

Just as all these agreeable facts were ascertained, shouts from the chain-bearers south of us, announced that they had discovered the line men of their stamp being quite as quick-sighted, in ascertaining their own peculiar traces, as the native of the forest is in finding his way to any object in it which he has once seen, and may desire to revisit.