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Well, now, considering what had happened, he didn't mind telling them that he had been gradually getting possession of it, little by little, paying 'Lige Curtis in advances and installments, until it was his own! They had heard what those surveyors said; how that it was the only fit terminus for the railroad.
Not a word had been spoken, but now the voices of the men rose freely together. Phemie listened with intense expectation. The explanation was simple. They were surveyors who had been caught by the overflow on Tasajara plain, had abandoned their horses on the bank of Tasajara Creek, and with a hastily constructed raft had intrusted themselves and their instruments to the current.
The surveyors had orders to survey the river for the purpose of connecting it with the line of exploration, and the latter was directed to make barometric observations. The commissioner and the remaining engineers were detained at Metis by the necessary astronomic observations.
"The surveyors assured us that the canal was pointed our way, though no one was sanguine of its speedy coming. We did occupy the geographical centre of the new county, and with that ends the tale of our pretensions." "We had Penelope Chubb!" The suggestion came from an old man in one of the arm-chairs immediately below. Interruptions never disconcerted Shelby.
Having once established such a centre, it is almost inevitable that it should sooner or later be made to serve sundry other purposes, and become an area for the election of constables, justices of the peace, highway surveyors, and overseers of the poor.
Many a section of deeded land changed owners for a milk cow, while surveyors would no longer locate new lands for the customary third, but insisted on a half interest. Ranchmen were so indifferent that many never went off their home range in branding the calf crop, not considering a ten or twenty per cent loss of any importance.
"You well remember also what occurred on the 10th of October, when our company was attacked by the Indians, how I lost my boy, and how we all journeyed back to the settlement on the Clinch River." "And now?" queried Peleg. "And now," answered Daniel Boone, "you and I are to journey to the Falls of the Ohio. Our surveyors there are in great peril from the Indians.
In the following modest words he records the event in his autobiography: "I remained with my family on the Clinch river until the sixth of June, 1774, when I, and one Michael Stoner, were solicited by Governor Dunmore of Virginia, to go to the Falls of the Ohio to conduct into the settlements a number of surveyors that had been sent thither by him some months before, this country having about this time drawn the attention of many adventurers.
These ranges were to be surveyed under the superintendence of the chief geographer of the United States, assisted by surveyors appointed from each state, and these surveyors were in turn placed over the different companies of chain carriers and axemen. Congress was making strenuous efforts to open up the western country to purchase and settlement.
Up the banks of the Shenandoah went the surveyors, measuring and marking the land and mapping down its leading features. It was no easy work, but they enjoyed it to the full.
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