24 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 
curacy at‘each corner we passed throughout the day. 
But though a part of the Black Range country had 
been surveyed sometime in the dim and distant past, 
corners were scarce as hens’ teeth, not worth look- 
ing for, and a baseline was eminently necessary if 
we were to know at all ‘‘where we were at.’’ 
To return to our first shot. When the plane table 
was set up, the township plat tacked on, and the posi- 
tion of our corner marked, Wallace carefully re- 
moved the alidade from its case and set it on the 
table. Then he placed a Forest Service regulation 
compass on a corner of the table, its sides flush with 
the two sides of the table that joined at the corner, 
and fastened it in place with thumb tacks. He then 
‘‘orientated’’ the compass by turning the table, that 
is, made the sights of the instrument point due east 
so that the sides of the table faced squarely south, 
north, east and west. The oblong metal base of the 
alidade was placed so that the telescope of the in- 
strument pointed northward, in the direction we 
wished to go, and the rear right hand corner of the 
base was set accurately at the point which marked 
the section corner where we were at the time,—the 
reason for which will appear presently. 
Conway had in the meantime gone forward as far 
as he could without being hidden by brush, trees, 
rocks or the conformation of the ground. After 
waving him into the field of the telescope by a set of 
prearranged signals, Wallace then sighted at the 
stadia rod through the lens, and by various manipu- 
