The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-03-19

or breaks. is done by the investigation who goes to the spot and makes up his mind what difficulties there are in the way. f5|
 A trained man finds out about dan ger from floods. the possibility of car rying material to the site. the eharac- ter of the river bottoms. the lengths of approaches. and so on. and when he gets back to civilization he is ready Ii furnish his company with full history and maps of the field of operations. sur veys, distances, geological formations, climate, amount of rainfall, character of population, etc.
 You see, in figuring on bridges in new country a company may win the contract not only by knowing the diffi- culties. but also by knowing of some good way to avoid them. This is where the bridge drummer proves whether or not he knows his business. And again. if he makes too favorable a report and may break them: many of these bridge jobs have been vast enough to ruin the builders if things went wrong.
 'Of course. in the subsequent negotia- tions with the customers the man who has been on the ground can cover the whole field in his conversation and meet all possible questions has a great ad- vantage and stands a good chance of winning. Generally he is in position to open the eyes of the projectors to a whole lot of things that they did not foresee or. calculate on.
 I've sold bridges during the past year in New Zealand, going one hun dred miles in g. canoe to do it; in New foundland, after crossing the water ways with fishermen in small boats in the midst of winter; in Brazil where had to go up river five hundred miles and slosh around in primeval forests for two months to get my facts, and in Honduras, where we camped for three months in the rainy season to beat an- other concern whose men were waiting in the capital for the good weather to begin.
 "One of the men in our line waded into Uganda to try for that big con- tract that was finally won by an Amer ican house. He shot two lions on the way. One lion he shot because he wanted his skin. The second lion he shot because he wanted his own. The first one trotted by his tent one evening and was disposed to mind his own busi- ness. He keeled over at the first shot A few days afterward he was at dinner in his tent when the second lion walked right in without knocking. The natives ran for their lives and the bridge drum mer rolled over to the side of the tent 1 in his fright. Luckily for him he rolled right against his big gun and just as the lion prepared to bounce on him he sent two bullets into him at short range. The brute fell on him and bruised him so badly, merely with his dead weight, that he couldn't march for couple of days; but he says that the pain from those bruises was nothing compared with the pain that he felt in his mind at the thought that possibly his rivals might be getting ahead of him.
 They didn't get ahead of him and he made his reports all right. But at the last moment his company decided not to bid because it had found a new l Uoc lul US pldiit oO dli HIS HSHL Wllu the wilderness went for nothing.
 NO, I.never. had any real adventures myself. Once fell into a river in South America and a crocodile. not an alliga- tor, but rel, genuine American croco- dile, made snap at me. foundered aboard a boat just in time to escape. Another time a snake fell out of tree right on top of my telescope, which I was resting against the trunk to survey a valley. And once in Burnah rhino- ceros stepped on my toe nd smashed it. But then, when. a rhinoceros gets so close to you that it steps on your oe and doesn't do anything worse, you are nat urally very much relieved. This partic- ular rhinoceros must have scented the camp, and it charged right down on Us though nobody had annoyed it. It went bang! through the whole place anrd | i.~-