1864.] 



351 



[Lesley. 



also, all but one or two copies of Loudon and Jefferson and the few 

 other Virginia counties of which maps had been executed. General 

 Crawford informed me that on his advance to Culpeper, he was for- 

 tunate in securing two beautiful manuscript maps of that county ; 

 but for the long campaigns in Virginia, the utmost annoyance has 

 been experienced for the want of maps. The mountain country of 

 Virginia has never been mapped, with even the most distant approxi- 

 mation to topographical truth. The mountains of East Tennessee 

 do not form so complicated a system as those of Western Virginia, 

 but no map of their features worthy of the name is in existence yet. 

 Even the large sheets of the seats of war issued for pressing and 

 popular need from the United States Coast Survey Office, can scarcely 

 effect a reduction of the principal errors. Nor can that mountain belt 

 be mapped except by topographical geologists, on the plan pursued 

 by the geologists of the Pennsylvania survey. It is to be hoped that 

 on the return of peace, this greatly desired contribution to science, 

 the extension of the Pennsylvania Appalachian Topography south- 

 ward, will be made, and with an advantage not enjoyed by those who 

 did the work in Pennsylvania, namely, with well-constructed county 

 maps, done with an odometer, like those of the Northern States. 



The number of these Northern county maps is now very great. 

 Mr. Smith has kindly colored for me a map of the United States, to 



show the parts covered by these odometer surveys. They are 300 

 in number. They have formed the basis of the recently published 

 and very correct State maps of New York, Pennsylvania, and New 

 Jersey. 



