A MAP REVIEW. 2ZJ 



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 effect, the surrounding valleys and the blank expanse of water in the 

 center constituting a ground from which the mountains rise in bold 

 relief. 



Nor, taken in detail, is it less worthy of study. The agricultural 

 district with its checker-work of farms, the great round hills which 

 cover the Comstock lode, the barren edge of the desert, the sharp and 

 ragged peaks which are the sierras proper, the easy grades of the for- 

 est-clad slopes about the lake, the rocky shore, the sandy beach, the 

 angular course of the mountain-torrent as it dashes between canon- 

 walls, and its winding bed through the alluvial soil of the valley, are 

 all given true to nature. 



The draughtsman to whom this map owes its realistic appearance 

 is Mr. John E. Weyss, a veteran of thirty years' continuous service as 

 a topographer for our Government. In order to catch and preserve 

 those characteristic traits of form and surface which it is so hard for 

 one draughtsman to transmit to another, he visited the ground in per- 

 son, and, from the summits of lofty peaks and other advantageous 

 points, accumulated a series of sketches with the aid of which to re- 

 store a natural effect to the construction-plots of contour-lines as they 

 came to his hands from the surveyors. The map is finished in hach- 

 ures, a method which is more intelligible to the unprofessional eye 

 than that of contours, and which, in this case, is made especially effect- 

 ive by a free and artistic handling of the subject. As that is the best 

 map for popular use which, in its true proportions, presents the most 

 exact picture of the country for which it stands, there is room, in a 

 district accidented as this is, for many a felicitous touch and extra bit 

 of shading not provided for in any of the schools of topographical 

 drawing. In fact, the draughtsman who adheres too closely and con- 

 scientiously to Lehmann's or any other conventional diapason of shades 

 is likely to construct a map whose geographical features are stiff, un- 

 natural, and almost mechanical in their geometrical regularity, just as 

 the writer who checks up every sentence by his text-books of gram- 

 mar and rhetoric produces an essay with none but negative merits to 

 recommend it. 



Mr. Weyss accompanied General Michler, of the Engineer Corps, 

 on his recent official mission to the different geodetic institutions of 

 Europe, and, having seen the best that the Old World has to show, he 

 still maintains that this is the finest geographical map ever made. 

 Taking into consideration both the subject and the manner of its treat- 

 ment, this claim is not an extravagant one. In one respect this has an 

 advantage over the maps of the thickly settled European countries, 

 upon which the utilitarian features of roads, villages, and other works 

 of man are so numerous as to obscure the natural attractions of the 

 land, and to give it the uninteresting appearance of a city plot ; for 

 too many right angles detract from the beauty of a map as well as 

 from the charm of a landscape. While the advancing wave of civili- 



