Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

ROUTE SKETCHING 89of the trail is marked by a small oak, with burl atheigiht of your head, blazed last year with a cross,and pencil-marked with arrow. The trail to IndianCreek and the Cherokee reserve on Lufty ds muchfainter than ours.Mapping.—Observe that a mere route sketch isonly intended to show the way from one point toanother, and tell the user where he is at any stageof the journey. Hence it need not be mathematicallyaccurate, and hence it can be made swiftly, withcrude instruments. Mapping proper is much slowerwork. Still, a very useful and practical map of aregion several miles square can be made in a fewdays by one man, combining his route sketches, providedhe takes a little more pains in locating a fewprominent landmarks as ''controls."In the example already given the country was soheavily timbered that there were few outlooks fromwhich mountain tops or other features could be observedfrom different points on the journey. Ifthere had been such, I would have noted their bear>ings from different positions, and thus would havehad a series of positive checks or controls by whichto regulate my sketches. How this is done is shownin Fig. 16, which is reproduced from an article inOuting, by C. H. Morrill. In this case a 4 x 7notebook was used, the left-hand page being ruledfor notes on compass bearings, distances (a pedometerwas carried), time, etc., while the sketch wasdrawn on the right-hand page. Notice the compassbearings of mountains, brooks and pond.If a similar trip had been made a few miles away,and bearings taken on objects visible on the firstroute, the two sketches could be combined into amap, as in Fig. 15. Where there were discrepanciesthey could be humored in by "splitting the difference,"and the finished work would be true enoughfor practical purposes.If one has a reliable map of the region he is in,but on too small a scale to show the details that he