It shows a depression approximately round, off which open a round bay and a long narrow bay.  There is also a round elevation and a long, narrow one; a long, narrow ridge, jutting out between the two bays, and a short, broad one across the neck of the round bay.

[Illustration:  Fig. 6.  Fig. 7.  Fig 8.  Fig. 9.  Fig 10.  Fig. 11.]

Now flood your lake deeply enough to cover up the features you have introduced.  The new water line, about as shown by the dotted line in figure 11, shows the oblong shape of the depression at a higher level; the solid lines show the shape farther down; the horizontal distance between the two contours at different points shows where the bank is steep and where the slope is gentler.

Put together the information that each of these contours gives you, and you will see how contours show the shape of the ground.  On the little map you have drawn you have introduced all the varieties of ground forms there are; therefore all the contour forms.

The contours on an ordinary map seem much more complicated, but this is due only to the number of them, their length, and many turns before they finally close on themselves.  Or they may close off the paper.  But trace each one out, and it will resolve itself into one of the forms shown in figure 11.

Just as the high-tide line round the continents of North and South America runs a long and tortuous course, but finally closes back on itself, so will every contour do likewise.  And just as truly as every bend in that high-tide mark turns out around a promontory, or in around a bay, so will every bend in a contour stand for a hill or a valley, pointing to the lowlands if it be a hill, and to the height if it mark a valley.

If the map embrace a whole continent or an island, all the contours will be of closed form, as in figure 11, but if it embrace only it part of the continent or island, some of the contours will be chopped off at the edge of the map, and we have the open form of contours, as we would have if figure 11 were cut into two parts.

The closed form may indicate a hill or a basin; the open form, a ridge or a valley; sometimes a casual glance does not indicate which.

Take up, first, the contour of the open type.  If the map shows a stream running down the inside of the contour, there is no difficulty in saying at once that the ground feature is a valley; for instance, V, V, V, and the valley of Corral Creek on the map.  But if there is no stream line, does the contour bend show a valley or a ridge?

First of all, there is a radical difference between the bend of a contour round the head of a valley and its bend round the nose of a ridge,

Compare on the map the valleys V and the ridges R. The bend of the contour round the head of the valley is much sharper than the bend of the contour round the nose of the ridge.  This is a general truth, not only in regard to maps, but also in regard to ground forms.  Study any piece of open ground and note how much wider are the ridges than the valleys.  Where you find a “hog back” or “devil’s backbone,” you have an exception to the rule, but the exceptions are not frequent enough to worry over.