“Well, you can do as well as an Indian; and let me tell you an Indian can make a pretty good map with nothing but a stick and a smooth place in the sand.”
“How could I tell how far it was from one place to another?” inquired the newly elected map-maker.
“We can’t tell so very well, as we are now traveling. Of course, when engineers go out in a party they measure every mile by a chain, and know just how far they have come. The old trappers used to allow three or four miles an hour for their pack-horses in a country like this. Sometimes an engineer carries what is called a pedometer in his pocket, which tells him how far he has walked. Maybe you did not know that instrument was invented by Thomas Jefferson over a hundred years ago? Suppose you allow twenty or twenty-five miles a day, at most, for our travel. Now you have your compass, and, though you don’t try to put in every little bend in the trail or in the valley, you take the courses of all the long valleys and the general directions from one peak to another. Thus between your compass and your pack-train you will have to do the best you can with your map, because we have no scientific instruments to help us.”
“All right,” said John. “I’ll make my notes the best I can, and every night we’ll try to bring up the map. It’ll be fine to have when we get back home to show our folks, won’t it?”
“Well, I’ll help you all I can,” said Uncle Dick. “You remember the two big streams that run into the Miette back of us, where we made the fourth ford of the Miette? Well, that is just about eight miles from the Athabasca River. If we had not lost so much time with the horses bogging down we ought to have been in here yesterday instead of to-day, for now we are at Deer Creek, and that is only fourteen miles in a straight line from the Athabasca. This prairie between the forks of Deer Creek is called Dominion Prairie. The valley is soft and marshy for a couple of miles beyond the Dominion Prairie, as you can see from the way the trail runs over the edges of the ridges. The grade is a little bit steeper for three miles west of Dominion Prairie. The width of the marsh or meadow in here is about half a mile to a mile. At the last crossing of the Miette, three miles west of Dominion Prairie, the Miette is just a little stream with many branches. Now note very well the last one of these branches. That points out the true summit of Yellowhead Pass. Perhaps this very summer, if there is high water, some of the drainage water will run west from this marsh into the Fraser River, while some of it will run east into the Miette and the Athabasca.”
“Then how far have we come up the Miette all together, Uncle Dick?” inquired John, his pencil in his mouth.
“Only about seventeen miles, but they have been rather hard ones. We have climbed about four hundred feet all together in total elevation, but a great deal more than that if we count all the little ridges we have crossed over. Now do you think you can get your directions from your compass and make your map from these figures?”
“I’ll try my best,” said John.
“Well, come ahead,” said Uncle Dick. “It isn’t far from here to the place we call the top of the hill.”
Surely enough, after a little more scrambling progress they pulled up beside a little square stump, or post, to which Uncle Dick pointed silently.