My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

RADNORSHIRE 75half indoors and half outdoors work. It is delightfulon a fine summer's day to be (literally) cutting ' ' allover the country, following the chain and admiringthe beauties of nature, breathing the fresh and pureair on the hills, or in the noontide heat enjoying ourluncheon of bread-and-cheese in a pleasant valley bythe side of a rippling brook. Sometimes, indeed, itis not quite so pleasant on a cold winter's day to findyourself on the top of a bare hill, not a house withina mile, and the wind and sleet chilling you to thebone. But it is all made up for in the evening ;andthose who are in the house all day can have no ideaof the pleasure there is in sitting down to a gooddinner and feeling hungry enough to eat plates,dishes, and all."Some time during the winter I went alone tocorrect an old map of the parish of New Radnor.This required no regular surveying, but only theinsertion of any new roads, buildings, or divisions offields, and taking out any that had been clearedaway. As these changes were not numerous and thenew fences were almost always straight lines, it waseasy to mark on the map the two ends of such fencesby measuring from the nearest fixed point with a tenor fifteen-link measuring-rod, and then drawing themin upon the plan. Sometimes the direction waschecked by taking an angle with the pocket sextantat one or both ends, where one of these could not beseen from the other. As the whole plan was far toolarge to be taken into the field, tracings were madeof portions about half a mile square, which weremounted on stiff paper or linen, and folded up in aloose cover for easy reference. In this way a wholeparish of several thousand acres could be examinedand corrected in a week or two, especially in a country