underbrush. It was
not a task for a holiday, but a stern, difficult, and perplexing
problem, and Van Antwerp was not quite the man to solve it. He was
stubborn, self-confident, and indifferent by turns. He did not depend
upon his lieutenants, but jealously guarded his own opinions from the
least question or discussion, and at every step he antagonized the
easy-going people among whom he had come to work. He had no patience
with their habits of procrastination, and he was continually offending
their lazy good-nature and their pride. He treated the rich planters,
who owned the land between the mines and the harbor over which the
freight railroad must run, with as little consideration as he showed
the regiment of soldiers which the Government had farmed out to the
company to serve as laborers in the mines. Six months after Van
Antwerp had taken charge at Valencia, Clay, who had finished the
railroad in Mexico, of which King had spoken, was asked by telegraph to
undertake the work of getting the ore out of the mountains he had
discovered, and shipping it North. He accepted the offer and was given
the title of General Manager and Resident Director, and an enormous
salary, and was also given to understand that the rough work of
preparation had been accomplished, and that the more important service
of picking up the five mountains and putting them in fragments into
tramp steamers would continue under his direction. He had a letter of
recall for Van Antwerp, and a letter of introduction to the Minister of
Mines and Agriculture. Further than that he knew nothing of the work
before him, but he concluded, from the fact that he had been paid the
almost prohibitive sum he had asked for his services, that it must be
important, or that he had reached that place in his career when he
could stop actual work and live easily, as an expert, on the work of
others.

Clay rolled along the coast from Valencia to the mines in a
paddle-wheeled steamer that had served its usefulness on the
Mississippi, and which had been rotting at the levees in New Orleans,
when Van Antwerp had chartered it to carry tools and machinery to the
mines and to serve as a private launch for himself. It was a choice
either of this steamer and landing in a small boat, or riding along the
line of the unfinished railroad on horseback. Either route consumed
six valuable hours, and Clay, who was anxious to see his new field of
action, beat impatiently upon the