MD3PAD 466-468

[Toby G Levy]

        Chapter 48 begins on page 466. On May 29th, following their
later directives, they travel back east, taking measurements as they
go,.  They find it more difficult to work toward the east than toward
the west.

        Dixon enjoys the rustic coffee prepared at the camp, but Mason
hates it, and switches over to tea. Dixon cannot understand how Mason
can drink tea. They argue at length on the topic.

        THey arrive back at the tangent point and for three weeks try to
sort out exactly how to go about drawing the five mile north south line.
Archibald McClean and John Harland both advise Mason and Dixon that the
going will not be easy.   Mason reminds them that their loyalties
remain with Penn, because Virginia is not paying any of the cost of the
surveying. Their new measurements produce a second boundary a tiny bit
longer than the first and a bit curved. In a parenthetical remark
Pynchon says that the curved boundary will later become the legal
boundary of Virginia, carving a tiny slice from Maryland.

Toby