Understatement

In Chapter XII, the literary term understatement appears on pages 122-123. The understatement actually occurs after quite a bit of dialogue between Bill and Jake. Jake explains to Bill, "we have to follow this road along the ridge, cross these hills, go through the woods on the far hills, and come down on the Irati valley." I could only imagine Bill's incredulous expression as he responds to Jake with "that's a hell of a hike." Jake then states outside of the dialogue "it was a long walk." He then speaks of the journey there and how affected the two were by the heat and the distance. Clearly, Jake saying it was a 'long walk' was an understatement. Since the walk was described by Bill as hellish, if Jake felt the need to repeat the traveling the two would have to do, he should have used words such as lengthy, distant, or extensive that provide powerful imagery and a better description. Long is an overused word that does nothing to add to Jake attempting to describe their walk. The hellish hike deserves a better adjective then the overused word 'long' making it a definite understatement.