The Young Surveyor; Or, Jack on the Prairies — Background and Themes

OLD WIGGETT'S SECTION CORNER.

The horse was driven to a good shady place on the edge of the woods, relieved of his bridle, and left in charge of the dog. In the mean while the old man cut a few oak saplings and hewed them into stakes.

"Now, I want ye to give me a notion of how you're gwine to work," he said, as the youth brought his compass and set it up on its tripod at the foot of the tree. "For, otherwise, how am I to be sure of my corner, when you say you've found it?"

"O, I think we shall find something to convince you! However, look here, and I'll explain."

While waiting for the wavering needle to settle in its place, the youth made a hasty diagram in a page of his notebook.

"Here we are on the edge of the timber. _A_ is your first tree. _B_ is the one where we are. Now if the bearings are correct, and I run two lines accordingly, the place where they meet will be the place for your corner stake; say at _C_."

"That looks cute; I like the shape of that!" said the old man, interested.

"If the distance was short,--feet instead of rods,--all the instruments we should want," said the young surveyor, with his peculiarly bright smile, "would be a foot measure and two strings."

"How so?" said the old man, who could not believe that science was as simple a thing as that.

"Why, for instance, we will say the tree _A_ is eighteen feet from the corner you want to find; _B_, sixteen feet. Now take a string eighteen feet long, and fasten the end of it by a nail to the centre of the blazed trunk, _A_; fasten another sixteen feet long to _B_; then stretch out the loose ends of both until they just meet; and there is the place for your stake."

"I declar'!" exclaimed the old man. "That's the use of the tew trees. Banged if I dew see, though, how you're gwine to git along by runnin' a line from jest one."

"If I run two lines, as I have shown you, where they meet will be the point. Now if I run one line, and measure it, I shall find the point where the other line ought to meet it. We'll see. Here on my compass is a circle and a scale of degrees, which shows me how to set it according to the bearings. Now look through these sights, and you are looking straight in the direction of your section corner."

"Curi's, ain't it?" grinned the old man. "'Cordin' to that, my corner is out on the perairie, jest over beyant that ar knoll."

"You're right. Now go forward to the top of it, while I sight you, and we'll set a stake there. As I signal with my hands this way, or this, move your stake to the right or left, till I make _this_ motion; then you are all right."

The young surveyor had got his compass into position, by looking back through the sights at the tree. He now placed himself between it and the tree, and, sighting forward, directed the old man, who went on over the knoll, where to set his stakes.

On the other side of the knoll, it was found that the line crossed a slough,--or "slew," as the old man termed it,--which lay in a long, winding hollow of the hills. This morass was partly filled with stagnant water; and the old man gave it a bad name.

"It's the wust slew in the hull country. I've lost tew cows in 't. I wouldn't go through it for the price of my farm. Couldn't git through; a man would sink intew it up tew his neck."

"Then we may have to get a boat to find your section corner," laughed the young surveyor.

"But it's noth'n' but a bog this time o' year; ye can't navigate a boat thar. And it'll take till middle o' next week to build a brush road acrost. Guess we're up a stump now, hey?"

"O, no; stumps are not so plenty, where I undertake jobs! Let's have a stake down there, pretty near the _slew_; then we will measure our line, and see how much farther we have to go."

The old man helped bear the chain; and a careful measurement showed that the stake at the edge of the slough was still four rods and thirty links from the corner they sought.