CHAPTER III.
GOULD AS SURVEYOR AND HISTORIAN.
The tin shop was profitable but slow, and with an
outcropping of the avidity which he afterward
showed, he sought for something more lucrative. In
1852 he transferred his interest to his father and
arranged to take charge of a surveying party at
twenty dollars a month. Gould had heard of a man
in Ulster county who was looking for an assistant.
He was making a map of that county and Gould
wrote to him. When he left home to take the
position, his father offered him money, but he left
all his capital in the store, burned his ships behind
him, and took only money enough to pay his fare
to the place where the new position was to begin.
His new employer started him out to make the
surveys, to see where the roads were and to locate
the residences. He also instructed young Gould to
get trusted for his living expenses along the way,
and that he would pay them following after him.
Two or three days later, Gould ran against the first
objection to this arrangement from one of his entertainers,
who knew that the employer had already
failed three times. He agreed to trust young Gould
but would not trust the employer. The boy
wandered on after this rebuff until three o'clock,