Photographs by U.S.G.S.
Difficulties of Work.
In the Giant Tule Swamps in the Southern Sacramento Valley. The umbrella is not for comfort, but to keep the sun off the instrument.
"I didn't fare as well when I got trapped down there," he commented, "and while I suppose it was funny, I couldn't see the joke of it myself."
"Was that in the tule grass?" asked Field. "Tell us the yarn."
"I think I told you," began the new assistant, "how hard that stuff is to make a way through, and though it is really almost as tangled as this marsh work up here, the ground is so flat that far fewer bench marks are required. We had taken a long sight, because there was a sort of depression at that point which we wanted to delimit, and I was quite a distance from the plane table. Suddenly I felt a swish of water at my feet, my first realization that the tide was coming in. This had often happened before, and the water usually rose to a little above the knee, when, as soon as the tide ebbed, it would flow out and leave all dry again.