AN INFORMAL GLOSSARY: 
Adios 
Spanish for ‘‘good-bye.’? Used commonly in the 
Southwest. About the same as ‘‘Well, so long!’’ in 
New York. 
Alidade 
Webster calls it ‘‘the portion of a graduated instru- 
ment, as a quadrant or astrolabe, carrying the sights 
or telescope, and showing the degrees cut off on the 
are of the instrument.’’ Perhaps the description given 
in the text may prove as enlightening as this definition 
to the layman. 
Aneroid Barometer 
‘““A barometer the action of which depends on the 
varying pressure of the atmosphere upon the elastic top 
of a metallic box (shaped like a watch) from which the 
air has been exhausted. An index shows the variation 
of pressure.’’—Webster. This watch-shaped box, in- 
stead of hours, had numbers marked on its face—from 
one to twelve thousand, by thousands,—and spaces be- 
tween to indicate each hundred feet in the thousand. It 
had one hand, which we commonly set by screwing the 
top of the case around, at the elevation our stations 
recorded when starting to cruise. As we went up or 
down thereafter this hand was supposed to record the 
difference in altitude, computed on the variation of 
atmospheric pressure, by moving around to the proper 
space on the face of the instrument. I say ‘‘supposed 
to’’ because sometimes it didn’t work with the exactness 
of a chronometer. I would like to record my impres- 
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