- ready system suffices for the little cruiser; but as
her owner has to pick his way along, to him, unfamiliar coasts, identifying new landmarks, avoiding shoals and rocks and other dangers, shaping his course across broad waters, he must carry with him certain instruments and other articles connected with navigation, and make himself thoroughly conversant with their use. Thus he must provide himself with a hand-lead and line for sounding; a log-ship and line with which to gauge the speed his vessel is making; the charts of the coasts he proposes to visit, and the pilot-books and sailing directions to accompany them; dividers and parallel rules; and one of the almanacs published for the use of the coasting sailor (Pearson's is the one which I have always used, and it is to be highly recommended) which contain the tide-tables for British and other European ports, and a good deal of other useful information.
THE CHART
As the world is spherical, no portion of it can be correctly represented on a flat surface such as a chart. All maps and charts necessarily distort the relative sizes of different regions and the distances between various points. Several methods of dealing with this difficulty have been devised. Formerly mariners employed the Plane Chart, on which the parallels of latitude and the meridians of longitude
