Lessons in chalk modeling: The new method of map drawing

by Ida Cassa Heffron

Relief maps in relatively exact proportions will not help to this, as the highest elevation would appear nearly on a plane with the ocean level, and would be of no better service for school use than the flat maps, from which no idea of the general organism can be acquired by the young student, if indeed it can be by one of riper years.

Also in all topographical surveys, and in the profile of vertical sections of country found in many geographies, we find the same exaggeration of height in relation to horizontal distances, used to illustrate elevations and slopes.

These, with photographs or pictures of relief maps are extensively used, as well as birds’-eye views, showing on the part of the map-makers, a recognition of the importance of the pupil’s gaining mental concepts of altitudes. The latter, of course, must exercise his judgment in relating the heights, to the horizontal distances given, as he so continually does in every-day life in regard to other matters.

The horizontal map distances should be related to the other horizontal distances of the map, and the altitudes to other altitudes, and these with reference, also, to the tabulated lists found in every geography, of the heights of mountain peaks and lengths of rivers.

“All knowledge of external things comes through observation, comparison, and judgment.” To judge of great altitudes, one must have a knowledge of the heights within experience. To be able to gain a proper conception of immense distances, as the distance across a continent, comparison must be made with the distances one has already measured or traveled.

In the measurements of areas, size of fields and gardens, width of ponds, or heights of trees and hills, the pupil has numerical facts from which he judges of other forms and areas; as forests, marshes, plains, the width of rivers and lakes, the heights of mountains and cliffs, or length of rivers and mountain ranges.

Also in the measuring of the deposition of silt in small streams, he may judge of the quantity that large rivers like the Mississippi or Nile must carry; and from measuring the yearly growth of vegetation in his own climate, he judges what might be the growth in other climates. Thus through observations, inferences, and comparisons, he is enabled to read his map with some degree of power to judge its distances and altitudes.

The aim in the preceding pages has been to show the vital importance to the would-be delineator of Chalk Modeled maps, of the thorough study of geography, in its truest sense, and that the foundation of such study lies in the field lesson, with its accompanying expression of the knowledge gained there, of surface forms, areas and structures.

The habit, also, of modeling and drawing in connection with the study of geography, is conducive to the wished-for end; i.e., an adequate knowledge and expression, of the surface contour of the continent.

The chalk modeling of maps is in itself the simplest of all modes of drawing. It may have been inferred from what has been said on the subject of maps, that drawing them consists merely in showing simple indications of slopes; short or long, abrupt or gentle, and summits; broken or rounded, river basins, character of water-partings, valleys, lakes, rivers and coasts either bold and rocky, or low and alluvial.