continuing our work to completion ; because it is for the interest of 

 the parties engaged in this business to have an excuse for issuing 

 new maps as often as possible, just as milliners and dealers in dry 

 goods arrange their business so that the fashions may change every 

 three months at least, ostensibly for the benefit of the ladies, but 

 really for their own, and to the great detriment of the unfortunate 

 husbands. 



It may be said, also, that the United States surveys will give us, 

 eventually, a correct map of the State, and that it is therefore un 

 necessary for us to do it : this is not the case, for a most careful ex 

 amination of the United States work shows clearly that it can never, 

 in a mountainous country like California, be coaxed into anything 

 like a permanently valuable map. The town and section lines are 

 run in the valleys, it is true, and were this State a vast plain, these 

 lines would give us a general idea of the country, as they have in 

 the great Mississippi Valley ; but, in a region like our State, of which 

 less than one-fifth of the surface is plain or valley, they are of no ac 

 count at all, especially as topography is no part of the idea of the 

 Government in having the lines run, while the work itself (most of it, 

 at least) is so carelessly and even fraudulently done that it is impos 

 sible to make it fit together. In making accurate surveys of regions 

 where the town and section lines have been run by the Government, 

 we have found sometimes that a line supposed to be a mile in 

 length, and measured as such in the United States linear survey, was 

 in reality a mile and three-quarters long, so that the net-work of 

 Government lines, when laid down on the paper as they actually are, 

 and not as they profess to be, look somewhat as a gridiron struck by 

 lightning might be supposed to. This need not always be the fault 

 of the surveyor, as the system itself is one that is not in the slightest 

 degree applicable to the survey of mountainous countries. In the 

 southern part of this State millions of dollars have been paid for 

 surveys which were in reality never executed, as we find, when we go 

 over the ground, that there is not the least resemblance between the 

 topography as laid down on the official maps and that which our 

 work shows it to be. 



Our plan of operations and publication has been carefully adjusted 

 to meet the wants and the means of the State. We propose to pub 

 lish maps on different scales, all accurate as far as they go, but, of 

 course, with a varying amount of detail, to suit the condition of dif 

 ferent sections, basing the amount of detail on the density of the 

 population of the section mapped. For the whole State we take a 



