The Boy With the U. S. Survey Part 23

Roger rose promptly and went to the Director's office, and the latter shook hands heartily and motioned him to a seat.

"I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Doughty," he said, and Roger straightened up at least one inch at the manly form of address, "that I have received some reports from Mr. Herold, relating to the various parties on which you have served, which touch on your progress in the work. You will remember, of course, your meeting with the President?"

"Yes indeed, sir," answered the boy.

"This plan to secure trained workers by picking desirable material from the colleges and schools, on which a well-known philanthropist was so keen, has aroused no little interest in the Survey. As you were the first to go out, I have been anxious to see how the scheme would develop, and I was glad, a couple of months ago, to be able to tell the President that Mr. Carneller's project was proving most successful." He paused a moment. "It is but right to you to say," he continued, "that you have fulfilled the hopes I had, and that your first year's work on the Survey is a beginning of which I think you may be proud."

Roger flushed hotly at this praise, and seeing that the Director awaited a reply, said simply:

"It is very good of you to say so, sir. I just tried to do my best."

"Of course," went on the Director, "you have a great deal to learn and are very new in the work, so I don't want you to think for a moment that you know it all--or for that matter, that you ever will. But those with whom you have been speak approvingly of your obedience to the call of duty and of your ability to continue hard work uncomplainingly. I am not sure," there was a twinkle in the speaker's eye, "that making believe to be lost when you are ensconced in the branches of a tree is particularly conducive to discipline?" He waited for a reply.

Roger looked at him, and taking courage from the lurking smile, answered:

"No, sir. But," he added, "perhaps as much so as a snipe-shoot."

"A fair answer," was the kind reply. "Well," continued the Director, a little more authoritatively, "I am not at all sure that you will achieve your desire to go to Alaska next season, though I should not wish to go so far as to decide against it. In any case, Mr. Rivers, as head of the Alaskan work, chooses his own men. It is not that I am afraid of your not doing your best," he added, seeing the look of disappointment on the boy's face, "but that I feel it might be a little too much for you. The Alaskan work is a great strain for young bones."

"Not more so, sir, than crossing the Grand Canyon, is it?" Roger felt emboldened to ask.

"Don't boast!" came the sharp rebuke, "I don't like it. But," he continued, seeing the boy wilt under the criticism, "I merely desired to see you to say that I am well pleased with your work, and that I hope the college a.s.sistants, hereafter to follow, will prove equally successful."

Roger left the office of the Director as though he were treading on air, a feeling enhanced by the cordial reception accorded him by Herold, the chief geographer. There he learned, to his intense delight, that he had been appointed by Rivers on the Alaskan party, which was to spend the entire spring and summer in a south to north reconnoissance of that great Arctic territory.

"I was afraid," Roger said to the geographer, "from what the Director said, that I would not get the appointment."

"Well," Herold replied, "Mr. Rivers seemed to feel that you were keen for it, and figured that if it were given you, you would strain every nerve to make good. But, you see, you will have to do your utmost to justify the stand that Mr. Rivers and myself have taken."

"It won't be for want of trying, Mr. Herold," answered Roger, his eyes s.h.i.+ning.

"I am sure of that, my boy," said the older man kindly, "and that's what we are depending on. Now, let me see, this is the second of December, isn't it? Rivers sails from Seattle on February 15th, so that you had better reckon on being there about the 12th. Suppose then, you go home now for the holidays, take just a month, and report in Was.h.i.+ngton here on January 2nd, a month from to-day. Then we'll give you a few weeks'

work here to learn something about headquarters, and then you can go right on to the Pacific Coast, perhaps spending a day or two at home before starting on the expedition."

Roger thanked him heartily, as much for his thoughtfulness about the vacation as for the appointment he had desired so long. Indeed his month at home, amid an air in which he was a sort of hero, pa.s.sed rapidly, and as the idol of all the boys in the neighborhood, he had to spin yarns by the score, these tales being given reality by the dozens of photographs he had taken on the various parties of which he had been a member. Some of the photos were his own, but others were prints of negatives taken by the a.s.sistant topographers usually, for nearly every party in the field has some member whose skill makes him almost an official photographer. Indeed, nearly every one on the Survey is a master of photography, and few outfits do not contain at least one excellent camera.

On his return to Was.h.i.+ngton in January, however, Roger found it somewhat tedious to settle to indoor office work, but his interest grew in finding that the department had in operation scores of other lines of work that had not occurred to him. His surprise in the field at constantly encountering new avenues of work became amazement in Was.h.i.+ngton, when he first really gained an idea of the extent of the department's scope.

On the question of maps alone, he learned how important the Survey is to the country. Maps which should show a mining company in which direction ore-bearing veins should run, maps which should inform a railroad as to the comparative elevations along a proposed right of way, maps which should teach a farmer where to sink an artesian well for watering his stock, maps which form the basis of vast irrigation projects, maps which point the builder where to go to quarry stone, maps to form the basis of the special timber charts of the Forestry Service, maps dealing with coal-producing areas, and for a score of other purposes, for all these the Survey is called on.

And there, in Was.h.i.+ngton, the year through, Roger found expert and skilled men making these maps, compiling them from the sketches made in the field, correcting minor errors, comparing them with former data, and producing works of exact.i.tude and immense value. Some idea of the exactness of the work was gained by the boy when it was pointed out to him that in the Bureau of Engraving the printing of all this exact drawing must be done in a room where the temperature and humidity are the same the year round, since paper will shrink in a dry spell and expand when moist, and the printing of such a map extending over a period of months, might thus be made fractionally incorrect.

Then it dawned upon the lad that the libraries of scientific records of which Survey workers are the authors must needs require time and labor, and the compilation of statistics needed in other parts of the government service also takes up time. So that Roger began to see that the proofreading of all geologic and topographic maps, all ill.u.s.trations and all text of Survey papers have to be done and revised by competent men, in order that the scientific accuracy of these can never be impeached. He saw the scope of the annual reports, the monographs, the professional papers and the bulletins, and was not surprised to learn that these were in great demand, not only in the United States, but by foreign governments as well.

"But all this," said Roger to his friend the secretary, as they were talking together one day, "must cost the country a heap of money."

The other smiled.

"It has saved the country a great deal of money," he said. "In the first place the Survey is very economically run, and then besides, millions of dollars have been put into the hands of manufacturing interests by pointing out to them the value of by-products which formerly were wasted."

"For example, Mr. Mitchon?"

"Well, for example, the waste of the by-products of c.o.ke-ovens, such as coal-tar, ammonia, etc.," replied the secretary. "Here, come with me to the laboratories, and I'll show you."

In the large chemical and physical laboratories at Was.h.i.+ngton the boy found samples of metals and minerals of all sorts being tested and a.n.a.lyzed. He found that all the great works of the government are undertaken only with the advice of the Geological Survey, and he learned, moreover, that in certain branches the Chemical Laboratories stand higher than those of any government in the world.

As each day pa.s.sed the lad heard of some new activity of the Survey. He learned that every ton of coal consumed and every ounce of gold mined, was duly recorded by the Survey, and to his amazement discovered that the due safeguarding of life in mines and quarries was not outside its province. The refining of oil was regarded as appertaining to minerals, and many difficulties of fuel in steam engineering the boy found to have been minimized by the Survey in the power and lighting plants of the government. And, if this were not enough, it was borne in upon him that even such structural materials as brick, terra cotta and the concrete bodies, had in some cases found their beginnings and in others their best development under a further division of the Survey.

Then, to cap all, it was shown to Roger, that this multifarious work required careful and prudent administration, supervising all the details of personnel, expense, purchase, and distribution of supplies and so forth, to say nothing of adjunct matters, like library and fossil work.

Thus it was, that when the boy left Was.h.i.+ngton a month later, he had decided that an entire lifetime on the Survey would be all too little to grasp the vast and dominating usefulness that it bore to the country at large.

Thus the fated day arrived for Roger's start. He had made himself well-liked all through the building, and there were many to wish him luck on the expedition. A most hearty and cordial good-fellows.h.i.+p Roger found to run through all departments, and the good wishes of his superiors and companions were happy auguries for the start. The Director, too, called him into his office and gave him a most encouraging send-off, sounding no note of doubtfulness or regret, and Roger felt, as he left Was.h.i.+ngton, that no boy could ask pleasanter friends or more helpful comrades than those he had met on the Survey.

The chief geographer had accorded him an extra two days' leave in which to go home before he need start for Seattle, and Roger was full of pride, as his former schoolmates gathered around him to be able to speak loftily of traversing "territory on which no white man had ever set his foot." It was a little boastfully put, but as after events proved, it was true none the less.

The journey across the continent gave time for reflection, and now that there was no chance of drawing back, the warnings and advice that had been given to Roger rushed over him like a flood, and he had for a while a haunting fear lest anything should happen on the trail to shake the confidence his superiors had in him. But these fears vanished like a morning mist, when, arrived at Seattle, he went on board the gunboat, lying a short distance from the sh.o.r.e, and realized that he, Roger, had a right to board a vessel of the United States Navy.

Rivers was on deck, and he came forward promptly to meet the boy, saying, as he shook hands:

"So you made good, didn't you, eh? Well, I thought you would."

Roger laughed quietly.

"You said I had to!" he replied.

The boy's new chief gave a half-smile.

"Well," he said, "if you always do everything I say you have to do, I'll be quite satisfied. But it's not a summer picnic, by any means, and you may be sorry before you're through."

"That may be, Mr. Rivers," answered the boy cheerily, "but I'm not sorry yet. I'm mighty glad to be here."

"I've been sorry often enough that I took up field work, but----" he paused.

"But what?" asked Roger.

"But I couldn't get back to it quick enough the next year," answered the geologist.

"If the past summer is any test," went on Roger, "I guess I'll be the same way, for I never enjoyed anything so much in all my life. Why, I felt quite stifled back in Was.h.i.+ngton."

"If you've been caught with the exploring fever," rejoined the older man, "there's nothing more to be said, for that's a disease for which there is no cure, except----" He paused abruptly again.

"Yes?" queried Roger.

"Except old age, and that the explorer never reaches," was the steady reply. "And now you must meet the rest of the boys."

He turned to the topographer, who was standing near.

"Mr. Gersup," he said, "this is the boy."