They ran lines north-east and south-west the length of the island, and parallel to each other at eighty rods apart; then ran cross lines, also parallel, eighty rods apart; blazed a tree at every intersection, and numbered the ranges included in these spaces, and put them down in a field-book. As the shore line was irregular, they measured the shore sections by offsets from the range lines.
Charlie then made a plat of it. The island contained nineteen hundred and thirty-five acres, one rood, twenty-seven rods, five links.
“That’s not much more than there ought to be,” said Uncle Isaac; “you have measured the whole; but they didn’t call these points anything, and they of course made allowance for the squawk swamp.”
They were five days in doing it, and it afforded Charlie excellent practice. A short time after that, Ben was sent for to run a large lot of timber land. He hired Squire Eveleth’s compass, and took Charlie with him, when he had an opportunity to perfect his knowledge of that instrument.
In due time Uncle Isaac received a letter from Salem. The price of the land was seventy-five cents an acre. Uncle Isaac, Ben, and Charlie went to look over it.
“It is too much,” said Uncle Isaac; “seventy-five cents an acre! farther back, you can buy it for twelve or fifteen cents.”
“What of that?” replied Ben: “no chance to get a thing to eat, except what you get from the land, and while you are clearing, almost starve to death; have to hunt and live on beech leaves and acorns; while here are clams at the shore, and fish and lobsters in the sea, to fall back upon; besides a brook with a fine mill privilege.”
“Better than that, Ben; there are plenty of pickerel in this pond, and the alewives, smelts, and frost-fish come up here into the brook, and any amount of eels.”
“There is still another great advantage you have overlooked: there is a swale made by the flowing back of the water, where the beavers once had a dam, that will cut six or seven tons of hay; that would be everything to a man going to settle on it. With the hay in that swale for winter, browse in this hard wood growth in summer, he could keep cattle right off.”