General Lodge himself explained the difficulties of the situation
and what the young surveyor was expected to do. Neale flushed with
pride; his eyes flashed; his jaw set. But he said little while the
engineers led him out to the scene of the latest barrier. It was a
rugged gorge, old and yellow and crumbled, cedar-fringed at the top,
bare and white at the bottom. The approach to it was through a break
in the walls, so that the gorge really extended both above and below
this vantage-point.
"This is the only pass through these foot-hills," said Engineer
Henney, the eldest of Lodge's corps.
The passage ended where the break in the walls fronted abruptly upon
the gorge. It was a wild scene. Only inspired and dauntless men
could have entertained any hope of building a railroad through such
a place. The mouth of the break was narrow; a rugged slope led up to
the left; to the right a huge buttress of stone wall bulged over the
gorge; across stood out the seamed and cracked cliffs, and below
yawned the abyss. The nearer side of the gorge could only be guessed
at.
Neale crawled to the extreme edge of the precipice, and, lying flat,
he tried to discover what lay beneath. Evidently he did not see
much, for upon getting up he shook his head. Then he gazed at the
bulging wall.
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