108 Henry Gannett — Mother Maj^s of the United States. 



tions determined independently that they have been located. 

 Such determinations have been made in abundance by one means 

 or another, and they are well distributed ; so that for maps on 

 small scales there is no difhculty in locating these surveys. 



As these surveys have been made merely for the purpose of 

 subdividing the land, little attention has been directed toward 

 making them available for the production of maps. The instruc- 

 tions under which they have been made, however, require that the 

 points of crossing of all streams by the lines of survey be noted, 

 together with the directions of the streams ; that all streams 

 above a certain breadth, as well as the borders of all lakes and 

 ponds, be traversed ; and that the limits of all swamps and marshes 

 and timbered lands be noted. Had these instructions been every- 

 where carried out a large amount of geographic information 

 would have been gathered ; but unfortunatel}^ tt^ey have not been 

 fully carried out, and hence the township plats differ' greatly in 

 the amount of information which they present. These plats are 

 made on a scale of 2 inches to a mile, a scale many times 

 greater than the degree of detail uj)on them requires. From 

 these plats, with the addition of information from other sources, 

 the General Land ofiice prepares and publishes a series of very 

 useful state and territorial maps on. scales ranging from ten to 

 eighteen miles to an inch, and a map of the United States upon 

 a scale of about 40 miles to an inch. 



There is another group of maps published by the general gov- 

 ernment, the material of which is, in the main, compiled, but 

 which contains certain elements of originality. These are the 

 postal-route maps which are prepared by the Post-office depart- 

 ment for illustrating the location of post-offices and the lines of 

 transportation of mails. The natural features of these maps are 

 of course compiled. The boundary lines of counties, on the 

 contrary, are in the main laid down directly in accordance Avith 

 statute. The location of railroads is effected mainly by means 

 of plats furnished directly from the railroad surveys, and the 

 location of post-offices is in a corresponding measure derived from 

 similar sources. 



With the exception of a few minor matters, the above list covers 

 the survey works and the sources of geographic information 

 furnished by the general government. We turn next to the work 

 done b}^ the various state governments. 



