Memoranda and Log-Books. 27
received the medal of the Royal Geographical Society, for his exploration and admirable map of the Yang-tse-Kiang, in China, paid great attention to the subject : he was fully in possession of all I had to say on the matter ; and I gladly quote the method he adopted in North America, with slight modifications, according to the results of his experience, and with a few trivial additions of my own. For the purposes of memoranda and mapping data, he uses three sets of books, which can be ordered at any lithographer's :
.No. 1. Pocket Memorandum Book, measuring three inches and a half by five, made of strong paper. (Captain Blakiston did not use, and I should not advise travellers to use, " prepared" paper, for it soon becomes rotten, and the leaves fall out; besides that, wet makes the paper soppy.) The books are paged with bold numbers printed in the corners ; two faint red lines are ruled down the middle of each page, half an inch apart, to enable the book to be used as a field-surveyor's book when required. In this pocket-book, every single thing that is recorded at all, is originally recorded with a hard HHH pencil. Everything is written consecutively, without confusion or attempt to save space. There may easily be 150 pages in each of these books ; and a sufficient number should be procured to admit of having at least one per month. Do not stint yourself in these.
No. 2. Log-Book.-This is an orderly way of collecting such parts of the surveying material as has been scattered over each day in your note-book. It is to be neatly written out, and will become the standard of future reference. By using a printed form, the labour of drawing up the log on the one hand, and that of consulting it on the other, will be vastly diminished. I give Captain Blakiston's form, in pages 28, 29, and I would urge intending travellers not to depart from it without very valid reasons, for it is the result of considerable care and experience. The size in which the form is printed here is not quite accurate, because the pages of this book are not large enough to admit of it, but the proportion is kept. The actual size is intended to be five and a half inches high and nine inches wide, so that it should open freely along one of the narrow sides of the page, in the way that all memoranda
