GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES 287 



ernment early devised a system of land partition. Surveyors 

 were sent into the wilderness to subdivide the land for purposes 

 of record and sale or gift. The land Avas divided into square 

 tracts six miles on each side, called towns or townships, and their 

 corners marked, sometimes by ax marks on trees called blazes, 

 and sometimes by artificial marks. A row of such towns run- 

 ning north and south is called a ravge, and numbered E. and W. 

 from some arbitrary meridian. Similarly a row of towns run- 

 ning east and west is called toivn, and is numbered north or south 

 from an arbitrary base line. Each town was further subdivided 

 into 36 squares, each containing one square mile, or 640 acres, 

 called a section. The sections are similarly numbered from 1 to 36 

 in every town. Each corner of each section was marked by the 

 surveyors, who were thus required actually to chain over every 

 mile, to keep a record of their measures, to note all streams and 

 lakes, and the character of soil and timber ; to note the magnetic 

 declination, and to submit to the General Land Office a skeleton 

 map of each town subdivided, together with their field-notes. 

 These maps, called town plats, now constitute a vast body of 

 original records in the General Land Office in Washington, and 

 are the sole dependence of map-makers for hundreds of thousands 

 of square miles of our territory. Every state and territory in the 

 Union except the original thirteen, Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, 

 Tennessee, Texas, and Alaska, has been thus in whole or in part 

 surveyed and subdivided. This work, now far advanced toward 

 completion, has always been under the contrpl of the General 

 Land Office, now a part of the Department of the Interior. 



For geographic purposes the results are shown in a series of 

 state maps and a general map of the United States. The work 

 was for about a century done by contract, but within the past 

 two or three years a part has been done by the U. S. Geological 

 Survey in connection with its topographic surveys. 



Thus indirectly the General Land Office has for a centur}'^ been 

 and still continues to be one of the important geographic agen- 

 cies of the United States. 



Coast and Geodetic Survey. — Another old and important geo- 

 graphic agency is the Coast and Geodetic Survey, under the Treas- 

 ury Department. The primary purpose of this bureau was to 

 accurately chart the coast for purposes of commerce and defense. 

 Its field of work is tidewater with a fringe of topography land- 

 wards and a somewhat extensive border of sea bottom seawards. 

 Created in 1807, it made little progress till 1832. In that j-ear it 



