Suddenly there was a cry of alarm! The rope-man nearest the cliff edge noticed that the rope was bearing upon a piece of rock the edge of which was as keen as that of a razor. The rope had been sawn almost in two. Lowering stopped. The two men rushed forward to grasp the rope below the point of pending rupture to ease the strain. But they were too late. There was a slight tremor, the last strand snapped, and before the rope-men realised the situation as the end hung limply in their hands, the cry of the lost engineer as he tumbled through the air was echoed from the depths of the canyon.
Life in the field is indisputably hard and exacting, and the task is often aggravated by the scarcity, or monotony, of the food. This condition of affairs, however, is incomparably better to-day than it was thirty years ago. The surveyors are tended more thoughtfully than they were then, and the perfection of food-preserving science has enabled a camp now to be provisioned with tasty comestibles which formerly were unknown. Pork, beans and bannock—a substitute for bread made from flour and bacon fat with a little baking-powder—constituted the staple articles of diet, varied with fish from the streams, game from the forests and wild fruits. The bread was often musty, for immersion time after time in a torrent and storage upon damp ground did not improve the flavour of the flour by any means. The pork or bacon often was rancid, while the cook was invariably an execrable exponent of the culinary art, and his bannock played sad havoc with the digestive organs of the human body. Little wonder that the men, under such conditions, sought to secure additions to the menu from the rivers by methods decidedly unsportsmanlike, but the “end justified the means”; or delighted in bear steaks and venison.
Extreme altitudes such as have to be attained in order to cross the Andes undermine the strongest constitutions and render the surveyor’s work increasingly difficult. Struggling, crawling and slipping among crags and loose rocks inflicting cuts and bruises is arduous work indeed, but when the human frame is racked by the tortures of sorochté, or mountain sickness, the surveyor’s plight is to be pitied in very truth. In such climes the cold and winds are pitiless, the movements of the thermometer between midnight and noon are enormous, the fluctuation in some cases being as much as a hundred degrees in the course of twelve hours. In the middle of the day the heat is well-nigh unbearable, and the surveyor gladly discards his outer clothing. At night he finds it no simple matter to keep warm, for the mercury descends to a very low level and frost prevails. The winds too are so cutting and penetrating that it requires elaborate and special clothing after dark to keep warm.
Now and again a situation develops which relieves the monotony of the daily round of struggle against the forces of Nature. South America is pre-eminently the home of these humorous incidents. The concession for the construction of a railway through one of the tropical republics had been granted, and no time was lost in pushing forward with the preliminary surveys. But when the men with the transit and level reached a certain city they were surprised to meet with unveiled opposition. The municipal authorities point-blankly refused to permit the surveyors to carry out their work in the precincts of the city. Seeing that the latter was to benefit mostly from the steel link, the attitude was somewhat inexplicable at first sight. A little reflection, however, upon the South American methods of transacting business convinced the surveyor that bribery was the root of the trouble. He reported the interruption to his superiors, whose representatives hurried to the city to fathom the reason for the unexpected opposition. It was as the surveyor had surmised. The civic authorities would permit the iron horse to enter the city if the concessionaries would make a handsome contribution to the municipal improvement fund—explained the mayor. “Well, how much do you want?” remarked the concessionaries, who inwardly had not overlooked this contingency. The mayor could not say off-hand, and accordingly several delays occurred until this vital consideration was arranged. As a result of the prolonged parleys the concessionaries undertook to deliver a certain sum of money to the city.
The bullion was dispatched forthwith and reached the city the night before payment was due, so as to prevent the authorities to withdraw from the bargain on the plea that the concessionaries were dilatory. But law and order were not enforced very strongly, and the surveyor, with his companions, entertained certain qualms. Accordingly they decided to mount guard over the building in which they were passing the night in case of eventualities, at the same time securing a goodly supply of arms and ammunition.
As the first streaks of dawn lighted the scene the guard thought he descried the forms of men creeping along the ground in the gloom. Silently he roused his companions, and with firearms cocked they waited developments. Not a sign of movement was displayed among the inmates, and the robbers silently forced an entrance through the windows and door. Once inside the building they were greeted with a warm fusillade of lead, and in accordance with the characteristics of their ilk, they did not stop to reply, but beat as hurried retreat as they could under the assistance of bullets, leaving some of their number hors de combat. When day broke the besieged party examined the fruits of their marksmanship, and to their intense surprise discovered that the dead included the mayor of the city, and one or two of his companions who had carried out the negotiations for the contribution to the improvement fund, and who had been so remarkably solicitous concerning the city’s welfare!
It will be realised that the surveyor who undertakes the plotting of the line through a new country must be a man of illimitable resource and capacity, and at the same time ready to meet any development. It must be confessed, however, that the work, from its adventurous aspect, appeals strongly to the young engineer anxious to get away from monotonous routine.
CHAPTER II
THE ROMANCE OF CONSTRUCTION
Though the task of deciding the path for the railway teems with excitement, adventure and privation, the battle with Nature commences in grim earnest when the constructional engineer arrives on the scene. On paper it seems a simple task to follow the location as indicated by an unbroken row of wooden stakes, but to carry the surveyors’ work to completion, and to comply with requirements as to grades and curves, often proves a heart-rending undertaking. No matter how formidable any obstruction may appear, it is the work of the builder to beat it down; to overcome it by some means or other with the minimum of expense. He must be baulked by nothing.