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Useful Amusement with the Pocket Compass

Pocket compasses are to be bought for five or six shillings, and may be used in many ways. In travelling over mountains or a wide extended moor, they are indispensably necessary; and no one should go a tour into Wales, Scotland, or the lakes without such a companion, and it will be a very useful and amusing exercise for any young person to take the bearings of his own or some particular locality, and make out what may be called a bearing card. This he may easily do in the following manner. Supposing he wishes, for instance, to take the bearings of his own house, he has nothing to do but to set his pocket compass upon a map of the district,--a county map will do very well, unless his house stands on the verge of a county, then two county maps will be necessary. He must make the north of the map exactly coincide with the north, as indicated by his compass, and having fixed his map in this situation, he should take a ruler and piece of paper, and dot down the exact bearings of each important town, or place, or village, around him. Let him suppose himself, for instance, in the town of Cambridge, and laying down his map as indicated by the compass, north to north and south to south, he will find the following places due north, Wilberton, Wentworth; Little Wilbraham, Teversham, due east; Duxford and Chesterfield, scuth; Coton and St. Neots in Huntingdonshire, west. The other points of the compass may be filled up in the same manner. Should therefore our young friend be upon any elevated situation near his own dwelling, or upon any other elevated spot from which the bearings have been taken, he will be able to inform his young friends that such and such a place lies in such a direction, that this place lies due north, the other north-west, a third south-east, the fourth south-west, &c. &c.;