e during a
long spell of camp life in a tropical climate, and in a country where
civilisation is still elementary except in the more important centres.
Luckily for them, the first section of their work comprised only a
stretch of a little more than thirty miles of tolerably flat country,
where no serious natural difficulties presented themselves, and that
part of their work was soon accomplished. Yet Escombe found even this
trifling bit of the great task before him sufficiently arduous; for
Butler not only demanded that he should be up and at work in the open at
daybreak, and that he should continue at work so long as daylight
lasted, but that, when survey work was no longer possible because of the
darkness, the lad should "plot" his day's work on paper before retiring
to rest. Thus it was generally close upon midnight before Escombe was
at liberty to retire to his camp bed and seek his hard-earned and much-
needed rest.

But it was when they got upon the second section of their work--between
Huacho, Cochamarca, and Cerro de Pasco--that their real troubles and
difficulties began, for here they had to find a practicable route up the
face of the Western Cordillera in the first instance, and, having found
it, to measure with the nicest accuracy not only the horizontal
distances but the height of every rise and the depth of every declivity
in the face of a country made up to a great extent of lofty precipices
and fathomless ravines, the whole overgrown with dense vegetation
through which survey lines had to be cut at enormous expense of time and
labour. And here it was that Butler's almost fiendish malice and
ingenuity in the art of making things unpleasant for other people shone
forth conspicuously. It was his habit to ride forth every morning
accompanied by a strong band of attendants armed with axes and machetes,
and well provided with ropes to assist in the scaling of precipitous
slopes, for the purpose of selecting and marking out the day's route, a
task which could usually be accomplished in a couple of hours; and then
to return and supervise the work of his subordinate, which he made as
difficult and arduous as possible by insisting upon the securing of a
vast amount of superfluous and wholly unnecessary information, in the
obtaining of which Harry was obliged to risk his life at least a dozen
times a day. Yet the lad never complained; indeed he could not have
done so even had he been so disposed, for it was for