“Here we are,” Bob said, pointing to the trunk of a huge yellow pine.

On it showed a wrinkle in the bark, only just appreciable.

“There’s our line blaze,” said Bob.  “Let’s see if we can find it in the notes.”  He opened his book. “‘Small creek three links wide, course SW,’” he murmured. “‘Sugar pine, 48 in. dia., on line, 48 links.’  That’s not it.  ‘Top of ridge 34 ch. 6 1. course NE.’  Now we come to the down slope.  Here we are!  ‘Yellow pine 20 in. dia., on line, 50 chains.’  Twenty inches!  Well, old fellow, you’ve grown some since!  Let’s see your compass, Elliott.”

Having thus cut the line, they established their course and went due north, spying sharply for the landmarks and old blazes as mentioned in the surveyor’s field notes.

When they had gone about the required distance, they began to look for the corner.  After some search, Elliott called Bob’s attention to a grown-over blaze.

“I guess this is our witness tree,” said he.

Without a word Bob began to chop above and below the wrinkle in the bark.  After ten minutes careful work, he laid aside a thick slab of wood.  The inner surface of this was shiny with pitch.  The space from which it had peeled was also coated with the smooth substance.  This pitch had filmed over the old blaze, protecting it against the new wood and bark which had gradually grown over it.  Thus, although the original blaze had been buried six inches in the living white pine wood, nevertheless the lettering was as clear and sharp as when it had been carved fifty years before.  Furthermore, the same lettering, only reversed and in relief, showed on the thick slab that Bob had peeled away.  So the tree had preserved the record in its heart.

“Now let’s see,” said Bob.  “This witness bears S 80 W. Let’s find another.”

This proved to be no great matter.  Sighting the given directions from the two, they converged on the corner.  This was described by the old surveyor as:  “Oak post, 4 in. dia., set in pile of rocks,” etc.  The pile of rocks was now represented by scattered stones; and the oak post had long since rotted.  Bob, however, unearthed a fragment on which ran a single grooved mark.  It was like those made by borers in dead limbs.  Were it not for one circumstance, the searchers would not have been justified in assuming that it was anything else.  But, as Bob pointed out, the passageways made by borers are never straight.  The fact that this was so, established indisputably that it had been made by the surveyor’s steel “scribe.”

Having thus located a corner, it was an easy matter to determine the position of a tract of land.  At first hazy in its general configuration and extent, it took definition as the young men progressed with the accurate work of timber estimating.  Before they had finished with it, they knew every little hollow, ridge, ravine, rock and tree in it.  Out of the whole vast wilderness this one small patch had become thoroughly known.