brilliant as well as lovely
as well as very lucky to find such ideal conditions
for so piquant & boundarypointed a shower climb
so close to home
i should add
while still bleary eyed on the morning after my first round of
thames source drinking tries
which i will get around to reporting in another message if i ever
sober up
but let me insert some kibitzes below too
--- In
BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Lowell G. McManus"
<mcmanus71496@m...> wrote:
> During the time between the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and
the Adams-de Onís
> Treaty of 1819, the location of the boundary between American
Louisiana and
> Spanish Texas was uncertain. While the diplomats and
politicians wasted time
> and accomplished little, the respective American and Spanish
generals in the
> region took matters into their own hands and established a
de-facto neutral zone
> by signed agreement. The eastern boundary of this zone
ascended the west bank
> of the Calcasieu River from mouth to head before heading
directly overland to
> another stream farther north.
fantastic
this is already way beyond bus&ss
can you flash us a map of it
> About 20 years ago, as an experiment in demarcation, I
decided to locate the
> head of the Calcasieu River on the landscape. It's about 14
miles northeast of
> here, at the red crossmark on the TopoZone map at
http://tinyurl.com/2k56z .
i agree with your conclusion
having also zoomed out to check the 2 preceding confluents
which were interesting puzzles in themselves
> It's a pine forest, kept clear of underbrush by controlled
burning, so it was
> easy to access the streamcourse from a woods road on a
nearby ridge.
>
> I didn't know whether to expect a spring or what, but the actual
course was dry
> for a few hundred yards above the first moisture. It was
obviously a
> streamcourse kept bare of vegetation by flowing water, at least
when it rains.
> Since the generals' agreement placed the boundary on the
west bank of the river,
> I applied the theory that a stream's bed is distinguished from
its bank by the
> lack of vegetation. Therefore, I concluded that the official head
of the river
> should be placed at the upper end of its bed, thus defined.
Since any line from
> that point to the ridge would have had no west bank, I saw not
need for the
> boundary to go there.
>
> The several other imaginary boundary commissioners
concurred with my decision.
i would agree too since there was never any actual demarcation
& their imaginary visit as well as the imaginary demarcation
would most probably have occurred on a lovely day rather than in
a downpour
but the shower climbing might have reached the ridge under
such perfect conditions
which would have gained for spain a couple hundred meters
from the neutral zone
please stand by while i have another drink
>
> Lowell G. McManus
> Leesville, Louisiana, USA