MD3PAD 334-336

[Toby G Levy]

        Harland returns from the Mason and Dixon crew to visit his farm
and finds his wife Betsy has planted a field of sunflowers and in a
corner of the field the sun shines on "a newly-set chunk of Rose
Quartz," which is revealed nearly a hundred pages later to be the
monument left by Mason and Dixon to mark the crossing of the latitude of
the south edge of Philadelphia and the longitude of the "Post mark'd
west." He becomes romantic at the thought of accompanying Mason and
Dixon west.

        Time in the novel is moving swiftly. on page 328 it was summer,
on page 333 it was February and now on page 334 it is April and the May
and then June. Now they are ready to begin to actually survey the
Tangent line that will define the east-west border between Delaware and
Maryland. The move down to the middle of the Peninsula and survey
northward. By the end of the month they have chained about six miles
north to the Nanticoke river.

        Wicks launches into a lengthy explanation of why it was so
difficult to establish with any certainty the boundary laws of the
colonies and how valued the decisions of the Royal Astronomers were.
Wicks bemoans the stupidity of the rulers who gave vague ideas of
boundaries to the colonists.  Tenebrae goes to a large map and imitates
what King Charles must have done when granting land to William Penn.

Toby