RUNNING A LINE OF SOUNDINGS (SEE PAGE 659) 



This picture shows a sounding party in Baltimore harbor. The two observers are seen 

 determining the position of the boat by sighting with their sextants upon beacons on the 

 shore. In the bow the leadsman stands ready to cast the lead, while amidships is the recorder, 

 all ready to note down the observations. 



leveling work of the Survey enters into 

 the consideration. In a hundred ways the 

 work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey 

 comes home to every one, and behind the 

 curtain of its somewhat puzzling name it 

 is engaging in a wide range of wonder- 

 fully interesting as well as useful activi- 

 ties. 



WE HAVE 4O,O0O MILES OE SHORE-LINE TO 

 BE CHARTED 



In these days of great steamships and 

 vast commerce it is necessary that minute 

 information concerning our coastal wa- 

 ters be in the hands of navigators. A 

 single sunken rock in the path of water 

 traffic may send hundreds of souls to the 

 bottom of the sea ; a single point of shift- 

 ing sands carried hither or thither by 

 river or ocean current may ground a 

 steamer ; a single unplotted wreck on the 

 bottom of a harbor may do millions of 

 dollars' worth of damage. 



For 96 years the work of charting our 



coasts and making safe the water roads 

 along our shores and within our harbors 

 has been going on. Rather a long task it 

 has been ; but then we have rather a long 

 coast-line to survey. According to trend, 

 it is 16,000 miles long; but when it is 

 measured so as to include the shore-line 

 of all large islands, bays, sounds, and 

 estuaries within tidal range, it becomes 

 upward of 40,000 miles long. 



Furthermore, that coast-line is never 

 the same. Its main features may be as 

 fixed as the eternal hills, but many of its 

 smaller features are as unstable as the 

 shifting sands of the desert ; and these 

 affect every ship that sails its waters. 

 Between 1835 and 1908 Rockaway Beach, 

 near New York, grew to the westward 

 at the rate of nearly 8 inches a day. In 

 73 years Coney Island's western end has 

 shoved itself farther westward about 

 1,000 feet. When Vancouver explored 

 Columbia River he found a single straight 

 channel there. By 1851 Sand Island had 



657 



