MD3PAD 466-468

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Toby G Levy 
> Subject: MD3PAD 466-468
> 
>         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.

widdershins rather than deosil?

> 
>         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.

the mention of eggshells in the coffee led me to an incompletely satisfying
explanation at thecoffeefaq.com:

8.5 Why do some people put eggshells in coffee grounds?
This is bit of folklore that has been explained in at least two different ways. Some old cookbooks claim that the eggshells help to clear the coffee by attracting floating grounds and then precipitating to the bottom; some of these old recipes call for adding an entire raw egg. Less commonly, adding eggshell to the grounds of coffee is said to reduce bitterness (though improving the coffee to begin with would be a better tack.

The tradition was to use rinsed eggshells, which largely throws out the supposition that it is some component of residual white or yolk that is the active component. The shell is composed almost entirely of calcium carbonate, with the remainder consisting of magnesium carbonate, calcium phosphate, and some miscellaneous organic matter. The only possible effect could be to raise the coffee's already relatively neutral pH; it is unclear whether any change in acidity, assuming one even occurs, would be detectable by taste. Regarding settling the grounds, how the addition of large pieces of a mineral could settle coffee grounds is, at best, unclear.
..................................
> 
>         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.   

McClean (and who is he anyway, I'll be going back to find out)
mentions the "mysterious Lead Mines" of the Indians 

here is something about that, though a bit further West than Ohio:
http://dnr.state.il.us/lands/landmgt/parks/r1/apple.htm
History
Joutel, who was in the Mississippi Valley in 1687 and who was later to record LaSalle's expedition, wrote tales of Indian lead mines told by travelers to the "Upper Mississippi." The first white man to see the lead mines was Nicholas Perrot, a French trader who settled on the east side of the Mississippi in 1690. The first to exploit them was a Scotch adventurer, John Law. His Company of the West, founded in Paris in 1717 on the fraudulent claim that the Illinois lead mines were well-developed, collapsed with a thud, which was heard all over France and went down in history as the "Mississippi Bubble." In the nineteenth century American settlers arrived, the Sauk and Fox Indians were driven out in the Black Hawk War and Galena, thriving on the profits of lead mining, became a roaring boom town. Miners by the hundreds entered this country through a canyon which is now one of the principal attractions of the Apple River Canyon State Park.

The town of Millville was established where the park is now, but not a trace of it remains. Named after its two sawmills, Millville became a stop on the Galena-Chicago stage route and flourished until 1854 when the Illinois Central Railroad, building its line from Freeport to Galena, passed four miles north of the town. In 1892 a devastating flood washed out the dam, swept away many buildings and drove out the people of the town forever.