"By drainage, my boy, as you will learn. Hundreds of thousands of acres are being reclaimed. That's what makes a country rich; it isn't the gold stored in vaults, but the gold waving on the fields at harvest time."
"But it must take an awful lot of work."
"Of course it takes work. Don't you remember Mr. Rivers told you that there would be no chance to loaf? You'll start on that toughening process soon enough, all right, all right."
Turning a corner of a hallway, Mitchon and the boy passed into a small office, which was undergoing the throes of the annual tidying-up before being left alone all through the summer.
"Mr. Field," said the secretary, as he entered, "this is Roger Doughty, of whom I was speaking to you, who is to go out with you for a couple of weeks until Roberts comes back from the tule swamps and rejoins your party. You will have just about the same men as last year, will you not?"
The swamp surveyor extended a large loose-jointed hand to Roger.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Doughty," he said, and then, in answer to the secretary's question, continued, "I hope we do have the same men, Mr. Mitchon, it makes the work a lot lighter."
"That's what you all say; but it doesn't make so much difference to you as it does to the parties away off from civilization, does it?"
"Well," drawled the other, "Minnesota's civilization in that swamp country doesn't hurt her much yet, I reckon. When you're eleven miles away from the nearest road, and that only a 'corduroy,' in a swamp over which you can't take a horse, and through which you can't take a boat, you begin to think that other human beings live a thundering way off. Why," he said, "I've seen parts of that swamp so soft that we'd have to make a sort of platform of brush and three or four of us pull out one chap who had sunk below his waist, and that with only half a pack instead of the full load. No," he added, turning to Roger, "Minnesota's not so powerful civilized if it comes to that!"
"Why, I hadn't any idea that it was so wild! Is there much of that swamp?" asked the boy.