23. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 733-773

Three: Last Transit, 75-78

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Mason writes Dixon to tell him, "I am coming North a Mountain of suitable Gravity to seek, whose presum'd Influence might deflect a Plumb-line clearly enough to be measur'd without Ambiguity," adding a little dig about Maskelyne's "difficult History with Plumb-lines." He asks Dixon to recommend an inn, but Dixon insists that Mason stay with him.

"Mason finds Dixon still gloomy about the death of his Mother back in January," but they begin to reminisce. Mason tells him about how Maskelyne kept him on in Ulster longer than necessary and then brought him home on "a meat-ship" -- a vessel loaded with sheep carcasses. Eventually there comes a moment of unaccustomed tenderness between the old companions:

"Gave thee a rough time, didn't I, Friend." Reaching to rest his hand for a moment upon Dixon's Shoulder, before removing it again.
"Oh," Dixon nodding away at an Angle from any direct view of his Partner's Face, "as rough times go, ... the French were worse ...? The five Years of Mosquitoes, of course ..." The old Astronomers sit for a while in what might be called an Embrace, but that they forbear to touch. 

Dixon launches into an account of his stay at the North Cape of Norway, where he caught only glimpses of the transit. And then proceeds into a tall tale about his travels even further north, but to the inside of the world, where one of the inhabitants observes that people on the outside of the globe, "wherever you may stand, given the Convextity, each of you is slightly pointed away from everybody else, all the time, out into that Void that most of you seldom notice. Here in the Earth Concave, everyone is pointed at everyone else, -- ev'rybody's axes converge, -- forc'd at least thus to acknowledge one another, -- an entirely different set of rules for how to behave." Mason has his usual bemused reaction to Dixon's fabulations.

As they part, Mason asks, "If they don't kill and eat me up there, shall we do this again." Dixon replies, "We must count upon becoming old Geezers together." "They are looking directly at each other for the first time since either can remember."

In Scotland, in August 1773, Mason meets up with Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, who are "upon their famous Trip to the Hebrides," or so Cherrycoke claims, though Ives doubts that they passed within a hundred miles of each other. "'I had my Boswell, once,' Mason tells Boswell, 'Dixon and I. We had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam'd Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev'rything down, just like you, Sir.'" On his expedition, Mason locates the mountain called Schiehallion, but he declines to return to the mountain to make the measurements needed, so Maskelyne gets the credit for determining the mass of the Earth.

When Mason and Dixon meet again, Dixon is crippled by gout and Mason has rediscovered his old melancholy. They spend their time together fishing. Mason meets Dixon's mistress, Margaret Bland, whom he has always planned to marry "just before we go to America." They have two daughters, but "America now would never be more real than his Remembrance, which he must now take possession of, in whatever broken incompleteness, or lose forever." Mason tells Dixon that he has remarried and they have had a child, Charles Jr., and are expecting another.

While they are fishing one night, they're approached by a dog, a Norfolk terrier, who looks like the Learnèd Dog, though that was many years ago and this dog is "scarcely a year old." The dog follows them home, but never speaks. Margaret Bland asks what his name is. "'Fang,' says Mason. 'Learnèd,' says Dixon." Then one night, both of them have the same dream: The dog whispers to them, "I am a British Dog, and belong to no one, if not to the two of you. The next time you are together, so shall I be, with you." They take it as a sign that they'll see the dog when they get together next year.

But it is Mason, not Dixon, who emigrates to America, where Benjamin Franklin visits him on his deathbed. "His illness at the end was never stipulated. Yet 'tis possible, after all, down here, to die of Melancholy." Though he had five more boys and a girl, "he never put Rebekah to Earth." And he never really reconciled with his father, who claimed that Mason's son Doctor Isaac "was named after the Doctor who lost" Rebekah. Willy Mason tells his brother, "You are nam'd for Newton, whom Dad admires greatly," but Doctor Isaac remains unsure.

"When news reach'd Mason that Dixon had died, he went about for the rest of the Day as if himself stricken." He tells his sons stories about Dixon, and when he mentions Dixon's two daughters, Willy and Doc suspect him of matchmaking: "'Two Sons.... Two Daughters. And a Father wishing, as Fathers do, to be a Grand-Father." With Doc, Mason visits Dixon's grave, where "Mason beseech'd what dismally little he knew of God, to help Dixon through." When he is suddenly overcome, "'It's your Mate,' Doctor Isaac assur'd him, 'It's what happens when your Mate dies.'"

On his deathbed, Mason says to Franklin, "Sir, you have encounter'd Deists before, and know that our Bible is Nature, wherein the Pentateuch, is the Sky. I have found there, written ev'ry Night, in Astral Gematria, Messages of Great Urgency to ourTime, and to your Continent, Sir."

After Mason's death, "Mary would return to England with the younger Children, -- William and Dr. Isaac, Rebekah's Sons, would stay, and be Americans."

22. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 687-732

Two: America, 71-73; Three: Last Transit, 74

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The surveying done, they turn to putting things on paper, including the map-making, which is Dixon's job. When he's done with that, "Mason eagerly rushes to inspect the Map of the Boundaries, almost instantly boggling, for there bold as a Pirate's Flag is an eight-pointed Star, surmounted by a Fleur-de-Lis," the symbol of, as Mason puts it, "England's most inveterately hated Rival ... France." But Dixon explains that "A Surveyor's North-Point, ... by long Tradition, is his own, which he may draw, and embellish, in any way he pleases, so it point where North by." This is his own, "his Hall-Mark," "an ancient Shape." Mason is concerned that "some, finding it upon a new Map, might also take it as a reassertion of French claims to Ohio." And though they bicker as usual for a while,

Mason is able to inspect the long Map, fragrant, elegantly cartouch'd with Indians and Instruments, at last. Ev'ry place they ran it, ev'ry House pass'd by, Road cross'd, the Ridge-lines and Creeks, Forests and Glades, Water ev'rywhere, and the Dragon nearly visible.... "This is beauteous Work. Emerson was right, Jeremiah. You were flying all the time."

But they still have some survey work to do in "the cheerless Bogs of Delaware," which takes them almost another year. Zhang still hangs around complaining about sha. And at one point Dixon reflects on what all their travels together have in common: "Slaves. Ev'ry day at the Cape, we lived with Slavery in our faces, -- more of it at St. Helena, -- and now here we are again, in another Colony, this time having drawn them a Line between their Slave-Keepers, and their Wage-Payers, as if doom'd to re-encounter thro' the World this public secret, this shameful Core."

At the end of June, when they finish their measuring, they go south to Baltimore, "and the moment when Dixon will accost the Slave-Driver in the Street, and originate the family story whose material Focus, for years among the bric-a-brac in Hull, will be the Driver's Lash, that Uncle Jeremiah took away from the Scoundrel." It is an act that earns Mason's often-withheld admiration. And it brings into focus another theme of the novel:

Having acknowledg'd at the Warpath the Justice of the Indians' Desires, after the two deaths, Mason and Dixon understand as well that the Line is exactly what Capt. Zhang and a number of others have been styling it all along -- a conduit for Evil. 

One night, as he is walking along the Visto, Mason sees Rebekah's ghost, urging him to "come back to our Vale.... You must leave Mr. Dixon to his Fate, and attend your own.... You ... must go back inside the House of your Duty. When you come out again, he will no longer be there, and the Dark will be falling." On Sept. 11, 1768, they sail for England.

There follows a fantasy about Mason and Dixon journeying together, westward beyond the Ohio. "Betwixt themselves, neither feels British enough anymore, nor quite American, for either Side of the Ocean. They are content to reside like Ferrymen or Bridge-keepers, ever in a Ubiquity of Flow, before a ceaseless Spectacle of Transition."

But in fact, they return to England and a meeting of the Royal Society Council in December 1768. The next transit of Venus is ahead, and the records of the meeting show that Dixon says he's "willing to go to the North Cape or Cherry Island; Mr Mason rather declined going; but added, that if he was wanted, he should be ready to go." As they leave the meeting, they are pursued by "Some horrible Boswell," who points out, "neither of you has been voted to membership in the Royal Society. Mr. Mason, we've heard you're the one here who's unhappy with that, whilst Mr. Dixon takes the more philosophickal View." Dixon replies, "Only the long view, Lad."

The truth is that Mason is feeling guilty about leaving his family, and especially about his father's criticism. "So he declines the North Cape, and another posting together, symmetrically as ever, to that end of the world lying opposite their first end of the World. 'Someone must break this damn'd Symmetry,' Mason mutters." He goes to observe the transit in South Ulster instead, but sees only "the ingress of Venus upon the Disk of the Sun, but not her departure." Ireland reminds him of America, "frontier Country," and he has a bad dream of Rebekah.

He returns with his report to Maskelyne, who annoys him with the alterations he has made to the office that used to belong to Mason's patron, Bradley, and his flaunting of his relationship to Clive of India. Maskelyne is also suspected of having used his position as Royal Astronomer to have his method of measuring longitude accepted over the more accurate method using John Harrison's chronometer. Cherrycoke comments to his audience, however, that Maskelyne "did what he could to support Mason's claim to Prize money from the Board of Longitude for his Refinements to Mayer's Lunar Tables, whilst seeking none for himself."  In the end, Mason accepts a commission from Maskelyne to go to Scotland, and to visit Dixon along the way. 

21. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 659-686

Two: America; 68-70

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They are proceeding at about a mile or two per day, and in August tell the crew that "from here to the Warpath, we'll have no time for gentle recreations, but must stand Watch and Watch for as far west as we may." They hire a ferryman named Mr. Ice to take them across the Yochio Geni [Youghgiogheny] River. While they cross, Ice tells them of how his family was massacred by Indians. On the other side of the river, his nephew holds out a coonskin hat, asking for sixpence for the narrative, which outrages Mason's sensibilities.

As they cross the Cheat River and near the Monongahela, they begin to lose axmen, and the Indians grow more alert. "Cheat is the Rubicon, Monongahela is the Styx." There is an interlude about a chicken that becomes mesmerized by the Line, and the mechanical duck is similarly detained by "A simple, immoderate Desire for the Orthogonal," as Professor Voam puts it. Euphrenia interrupts Cherrycoke's narrative to comment, "The Life of an Automaton cannot, however conceiv'd, strike anyone as enviable," revealing that when she was a student in Paris, she earned money by pretending to be a mechanical oboe player.

Dixon "becomes possess'd by the Horizon," a phenomenon that Crawfford has seen before: the fascination with the West. "You will hear of gold cities, marble cities, men that fly, women that fight, fantastickal creatures never dream'd in Europe, -- something always to take and draw you that way." He warns Mason that when "something requires an unpremeditated cessation to the Line, well, -- Mr. Dixon ... may not be inclin'd to stop." Mason is puzzled by the reference to stopping the Line, but then disaster strikes: Two axmen are killed when the tree they are cutting down falls on them. It is a morale blow, but they proceed.

When they cross the Monongahela, more Indians appear. "'It's like Covent Garden on Saturday Night,' Mason grumbles, '-- what are we become, -- a Show they all must see, or lose credibility among ... whatever Indians have for Fops?'" Crawfford advises them that if the sense trouble, the best thing to do is act insane: "These folk respect Madness. To them 'tis a holy state." Dixon and Mason trade quips about each other's credibility as a madman.

But there still remains the problem of crossing the Great Warpath. Mason argues that "only the Mightiest God may command" the stars, and that therefore, because their line is determined by the stars, they "deserve at least the one small respectful Courtesy, of allowing their Line to cross, without a Mark, your Nations' own Great Path." The Indian, Daniel, takes them out on the path and shows them signs that the Catawbas have been there and have placed poisoned splinters on the way. It unsettles both men, but "Mason, stubborn, wishes to go on." Dixon is concerned that the Indians "want to know how to stop this great invisible Thing that comes crawling Straight on over their Lands, devouring all in its Path." Mason and Dixon argue for eleven days, and "at some point exchange Positions, with Dixon now for pushing on, razzle-dazzling their way among the Indians at least as far as Ohio." Mason, now cautious, warns Dixon that the Indians have been eying his red coat "and you are but the minor inconvenience from which 'twill have to be remov'd."

But finally the Indians agree to let them cross the Warpath, and they are only forty miles short of the end of their survey. "Mason is Gothickally depressive, as Dixon is Westeringly manic." But as they are sighting the Ohio, they "are surpriz'd by a Party of Indians in elaborate Paint-Work." They recognize the Indian they know as Catfish, who "is packing a Lancaster Rifle, slung in a Scabbard upon his Saddle, with an inverted Pentacle upon the Stock, unmistakable in the Moon-light." They recognize the rifle, which Catfish says he took "From a White man I have wish'd to meet for a long time. He was a very bad man. Even White People hated him." Mason warns that "The Sign on it has evil Powers" and Catfish should pry it out of the stock. Dixon, "with a look of unsuccessfully feign'd innocence," asks what happened to the rifle's owner. Catfish shows him the scalp.

On November 5, "the Visto is completed, and the Indians depart, -- as if, as long as a Tree remain'd, so might they." As the company breaks up, the November snows arrive. On the way back east, they pick up Timothy Tox, the poet, and agree to accompany him back to Newark, "'So long as he doesn't bring the Golem,' stipulates Mason.... As 'twill prove, the closer they escort Mr. Tox to the Metropolis, the less Evidence for his Creature's existence will they be given, till at length they must believe that the Poet has either pass'd, like some Indian Youth at the Onset of Manhood, under the Protection of a potent tho' invisible Spirit, -- or gone mad."

20. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 623-658

Two: America; 64-67

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Zhang tells the story of Hsi and Ho, who failed to predict a solar eclipse, putting them in danger of execution: "We made the Emperor look bad. As a Child of Heaven, he's supposed to know all about these Wonders in advance." They escape from the palace on a giant kite and crash-land into a pond, where they attract the attention of the daughters of Lord Huang. He hires them as his astronomers, but once again they neglect their duties -- distracted by Huang's daughters -- and miscalculate the time of an eclipse, leaving Huang exposed to his enemies in a battle. The story, Zhang says, has alternate endings: In one, Huang wins the battle after all, and banishes Hsi and Ho to the desert where they live out their lives as holy beggars. In the other, Huang is killed and the astronomers "take over Huang's Lands, Fortune, Army, and Harem of Daughters."

In December they return to the Harlands'. "No telling if they'll ever take the line west of Allegheny. All is in the hands of Sir William Johnson" and his administration of the Indian territories. They spend Christmas discussing the star of Bethlehem, with Dixon opining, "'Twas either a Conjunction of Planets ... or a Comet," and Mason asserting, "In seven B.C., according to Kepler, Jupiter and Saturn were conjunct three times, -- and the next year, Mars join'd them.... No one who was out at night could have fail'd to notice that. It must have been the most spectacular Event in the Sky." Zhang points out that Halley's comet appeared in 12 B.C. But Cherrycoke protests to both theories that "Christ was not born any time Before Christ." Zhang further complicates matters:

"If," says the Geomancer, "like all Christian nations, you accept the reckoning of Dionysius Exiguus, -- then, Herod died in four B.C., -- yet the Gospels have him alive when Christ was born, -- the taxation that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem may've been as early as eight B.C. There are a number of these ... strange inconsistencies."

This is too much for Cherrycoke to swallow. Dionysius, he says, translating the name as "Dennis the Meager," "was an agent of God." Whereupon Dixon mutters, imitating Mason's voice, "God should've found another Agent," shocking Cherrycoke. "'I didn't say that,' Mason protests, '-- Did I?'"

In the spring, Mason and Dixon begin hearing voices: "the great Ghost of the woods has been whispering to them, -- tho' Reason suggests the Wind, -- 'No ... no more ... no further.'" Dixon jokes, "Reminds me of a Lass from Escombe." But one day, "Mason and Dixon hear the Voice, stirring the tops of Trees in a black swift Smear down the Mountainside and into the Shade, more to plead than to pronounce, -- 'You are gone too far, from the Post Mark'd West.' ... 'Thankee,' Mason mutters back to it, 'as if we didn't already know.'"

The Implication of the ghostly Speech is clear to them both, -- They will soon be proceeding, if indeed they are not already, with all Guarantees of Safety suspended, -- as if Whatever spar'd them years ago, at Sea, were now presenting its Bill.

"Be they heedful or not, 1767 will be their last year upon the Line." They wait in Philadelphia for word from Sir William Johnson, who is negotiating with the Indians, so "they get a late start this Year, not reaching the Allegheny Front until July, a full year since they left off their Progress West." They visit the Redzingers on the way, reuniting with Zhang, who informs them that his nemesis, Zarpazo, is no longer a threat: He has gone to Florida. Allègre visits them, too, and tells them "I see the Duck seldom of late. Perhaps, by now, she has taken in her charge so many other Souls as troubl'd as my own, that there remains less time for me, -- perhaps, as she has continu'd upon her way, I have even pass'd altogether from her Car."

At Cumberland, they meet settlers with a pack of hunting dogs, and Mason endeavors to find out from one of the dogs, Snake, about an old acquaintance: "I'm assuming that Norfolk Terriers, like other breeds, maintain a Web of Communication about 'em, and I was but curious after the whereabouts these Days of the Learnèd English Dog, or as I believe he is also known, Fang." But Snake is wary of letting people know of "his own Power of Speech, for he's known others, including the credulous Fang in fact, who've trusted Humans with the Secret only to find themselves that very Evening in some Assembly Room full of Smoke and Noise, and no promise of Dinner till after they've perform'd."

A delegation of Indians, sent by Johnson along with an interpreter, Hugh Crawfford, arrives. They "will remain with the Party till the end of October, when, reaching a certain Warrior Path, they will inform the Astronomers that their own Commissions from the Six Nations allow them to go no further, -- with its implied Corollary, that this Path is as far West as the Party, the Visto, and the Line, may proceed." Crawfford informs them that the Great Warrior Path is "one of the major High-ways of all inland America. So must it also stand as a boundary line, -- for when we come to it, we shall not be allow'd to cross it, and go on." Mason protests that it will only take a quarter of an hour to cross and and they'll clean up after themselves. "Cutting it with your Visto would be like putting an earthen Dam across a River," Crawfford insists. He tells them that it's thirty or forty miles from Ohio, but "although on paper it may look like only a few short steps from the Warpath to the River Ohio, I beg you both, be most careful, -- for Distance is not the same here, nor is Time."

The Indians, and their ability to slip into and out of the forest, unnerve Mason. Cherrycoke observes, "Mr. Dixon seems quite content in their company," which prompts Mason to respond,

"Who, Young Jollification? drinks with priests, roisters with Pygmies, -- aye, I've seen that. What cares he, as long as the Tobacco and spirits hold out? ... No, -- 'tis I who am anxious before the advent of these Visitors how Strange, who belong so without separation, to this Country cryptick and perilous, ... passing, tho' never so close, as shadowy and serene as Deities of Forest or River." 

When the instruments are shown to them, the Indians "explain, that for as long as anyone can remember, the Iroquois Nations as well, have observ'd Meridian Lines as Boundaries to separate the one from another." This amazes Zhang, who of course opposes such lines, until he learns that the Jesuits taught them to do so. But an Indian chief named Hendricks says, "Others believe 'twas not the Jesuits, but powerful Strangers, much earlier."

The chapter ends with yet another tall tale, this one about giant vegetables.

19. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 597-622

Two: America; 61-63

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Capt. Shelby leads them to a mound that he insists must be seen at sunrise. Dixon is surprised to find that it is "a great Cone!" There is an entrance to the mound, which Shelby surmises was made by someone mistaking it for a pyramid and hoping to loot it, but there's nothing inside, "for Indians never built it." They find that it is made of layers of what Mason says "seem but different kinds of Refuse, -- dirt, ashes, crush'd seashells." Dixon says that things constructed with "alternating Layers of different Substances are ever a Sign of the intention to Accumulate Force, not necessarily Electrical, [but] suited to Forces more Tellurick in nature, more attun'd, that is, to Death and the slower Phenomena." Mason shakes his head dubiously. Dixon produces his compass, whose "Needle is swinging wildly and without pause, rocking about like a Weather-Vane, Dixon pretending to gaze at it knowingly."

Shelby informs them that the mound is "quite in the projected path of your Line" ad that when the "Visto" reaches that point "the Mound will become active, as an important staging-house, for ... whatever it may be." He also claims that the mound is "Welsh in origin."

The Cymry, Capt. Shelby explains, having first come to Britain from far to the East, -- some say Babylon, some Nineveh, -- their Fate ever to be Westering, -- America but one of their dwelling-places, the Ocean nearly irrelevant.

At the top of a hill, he points out "what seems to be the Ruin of a Wall," with a stone on which are some markings that he claims to be ogham. Asked what the markings say, he replies, "Well ... as nearly as I can make out, -- 'Astronomers Beware, Surveyors too. This means you.'" 

Back at camp, they fall into a discussion of the mystical, magnetic and telluric powers of the Line and the Visto, with Zhang persisting in his insistence that they invite Sha and on his belief that the planet itself is a living thing.

"Exactly as the creatures Microscopic upon your skin believe you to be a Planet. They may be arguing even now about whether or not you are a form of Life. Each time you step into a Tub, there comes upon them another universal Flood, with its Animalcular Noah, and another Reinhabiting, another Chain of Generations, to them how timeless, till the next Wash." 

Dixon wonders why "that Bottle isn't moving more briskly." But then he proceeds to twit Mason, as Mason had earlier done with his tale about being trapped in the missing eleven days, with his theory that the Earth is hollow. "Dixon on now like a tree-ful of ravens, with his Hollow Earth, an enthusiasm, Mason judges, too developed to be argued away without investing more time and patience than he possesses." Zhang joins in with the theory that China was once another planet, "embedded into the Earth thro' some very slow collision." When Dixon asks if the Jesuits believe this, Zhang replies, "Zarpazo does," and "beams and nods as if Dixon has just understood a Joke."

Captain Shelby foments another mystery, by asking "Where is the Third Surveyor?" The question puzzles Mason and Dixon, until Shelby proclaims, "you are Wise Men from the East, -- and ev'ryone knows they come in Threes!" The joke is laughed at, "Yet reported sightings of the Supernumerary Figure now begin to drift in. He is seen often in the Company of an Animal that most describe as a Dog, though a few are not so sure, for its Eyes glow as if all the Creature's Interior be a miniature of Hell."

On April 22 it snows, and as they sit around trying to warm themselves after a snowball fight, Dixon tells about his dream "of a City to the West of here, ... at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea, -- a large City, -- busy, prosperous, sacred." But Mason insists that "Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get." As they move west, away from civilization, they encounter more of "those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn'd to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants, -- the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth.... We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev'rything." He sees the western city Dixon has dreamed as "an Anti-City, -- some concentration of Fate, -- some final condition of Abandonment, -- wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear."

Dixon scoffs at Mason's response to his dream, and says he knows that the dreams Mason has just before he awakes are good ones because he has listened to Mason talking in his sleep, though he doesn't understand the language Mason is speaking. Mason is appalled:  "I'm talking, another Language, in my Sleep, -- Dixon?" When Dixon shrugs this off, Mason says, "somebody else's soul, possessing my body, whilst I sleep, -- that's what it's about!" Dixon suggests that he have Zhang listen in to see if he can understand what Mason is saying, but Mason protests, "Too intimate." Dixon replies that "Half the Camp hears it. Some take it for Indians. Axmen say, if so, 'tis a Nation they have not yet encounter'd."

Then one of the men, known as Light-Fingers McFee, is caught meddling in the sea-chest of the Swedish axman, Stig. McFee responds by showing what he found: "an un-roll'd Sheet of Parchment cover'd with elaborate Seals and antiquated writing in some other Language, possibly Swedish." He runs away, pursued by Stig, until Capt. Shelby's co-officer, Joseph Warford, rounds them both up and asks about "the mysterious Parchment." Stig says it's in Latin, and that he is "here on behalf of certain Principals in Sweden, who believe that the Penns, being secretly creatures of Rome, took illegally the original Svånssen land 'pon which Philadelphia would later come to sit, -- and thus that the whole Metropolis has never ceas'd to belong, rightfully, to Sweden." Stig goes on to assert that he's not really Swedish,that his "people are of the North, Northern, and very White, so white in fact that you British to us appear as do Africans, to you." And that his people learn "to impersonate Swedes, -- fr our Nation much prefer to remain unmolested."

Settlements begin to thin out as they move further west, and when they complete another ten-mile segment, they turn east so the axmen can widen the Visto. Mason tells Zhang, "this unremitting Forest, -- it disturbs me. Far, far too many trees."

"Consider," replies the Geomancer, " -- Adam and Eve ate fruit from a Tree, and were enlighten'd. The Buddha sat beneath a Tree, and he was enlighten'd. Newton, also sitting beneath a Tree, was hit by a falling Apple, -- and he was enlighten'd. A quick overview would suggest that Trees produce Enlightenment. Trees are not the Problem. The Forest is not an Agent of Darkness. But it may be your Visto is.... Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People, -- to create thus a Distinction betwixt 'em, -- 'tis the first stroke, -- All esle will follow as if predestin'd, unto War and Devastation." 

Mason objects that the provinces being separated are too much alike to provoke conflict. "'Except for the Negro Slavery upon one side,' Dixon points out, less mildly than he might, 'and not the other.'"

On June 14 they reach the Allegheny Divide, the point at which rivers begin to run west. And they encounter a group of frontiersmen, "holding long Rifles with octagonal barrels, and packing a Pistol or two each. Even the horses are glaring, all but carnivorously, at the Party." But they are mollified by the offer of any of the timber being felled and by the possibility of joining the team chopping down the trees. And soon the party encounters Zepho Beck who, when the moon is full, turns into a were-beaver, chopping down trees with his teeth. "'Kastoranthropy,' Professor Voam shaking his head. "And haven't I seen it do things to a man. Tragick.'" Zapho's wife, Rhodie, agrees. "I love him, but Zepho's no Carpenter."

But she has an idea: She'll wager that Zepho can fell more trees than "that Swedish Axman Stig." But once the full moon has risen on August 5, something happens: "Mason looks at Dixon. Dixon looks at Mason. 'The Eclipse!' both cry at the same time. They have only now remember'd the Eclipse of the Moon, due to start later tonight. Zepho is 'morposing back to Human, and not enjoying it much."

Rhodie has some consolation: "There is a promising Lawsuit in this, if we can prove those Astronomers knew about it in advance." Mason and Dixon both vow innocence. But the incident reminds Zhang of a story....

18. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 554-596

Two: America; 56-60

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In his field journal, Mason notes that "Cycles, or if you like, Segments of eleven Days recur again and again," which he ascribes to "the famous Eleven Missing Days of the Calendar Reform of '52." And to Dixon he tells a fantastic tale about being caught up in a time vortex, "finding myself in September third, 1752, a date that for all the rest of England, did not exist."

During their winter break, Dixon and Mason swap the direction they took on their previous break, Dixon going north to New York, where he encounters the same crew that abducted Mason on the last trip, this time more open about their revolutionary activities. In fact, he meets them "at Montagne's Tavern, upon Broad-Way, near Murray Street, which proves to be Head-quarters of the local Sons of Liberty, as well as thick with Intrigue, regardless of the Hour." He also meets up with some who figured earlier in the novel: "Foretopman Bodine, once of the Seahorse," and Philip Dimdown, who is no longer a fop but now "a serious young man upon a Mission whose end may not be predicted." Dixon is questioned by Dimdown as to his sympathies as a Quaker toward the Americans' impending struggle for independence.

"''Tis not how British treat Americans,' Dixon amiably rubescent, ''tis how both of You treat the American Slaves, and the Indians Native here, that engages the Friends more closely, -- an old and melancholy History.... My allegiance, as a Quaker born, would lie, above all, with Christ, -- withal, as a Geordie, for reasons unarguably Tribal, I can have no sympathy for any British King, -- not even one who's paid my wages, bless 'im.'" 

Mason's journey southward takes him to Williamsburg, while along the way he finds an equivalent nascent rebelliousness. In Williamsburg he is invited to play billiards with Col. Washington. The tavern is filled with smoke, and Mason and Washington overhear an argument over someone's use of the word "nigger," in which Washington is surprised to hear the voice of Gershom. "Half the Company seem to believe this is a white Customer, impersonating an African. Others, having caught Gershom's act before, recognize him right away." They began asking him for particular jokes they've heard him tell.

Then Mason recognizes another voice in the crowd, that of "Baby-Phiz Nathe McClean, or I'm a Sailor." McClean has returned to his studies at William and Mary. He tells Mason that he left the surveying party "just in time.... I should have been crazy as Captain Zhang, had I remained a week more." But he also says that "the Captain wasn't just Pipe-Smoaking in the Article of that Sha. We all felt it, as, to Appearance, did you and Mr. Dixon. Surveying a Property Line, that may be one thing, -- clearing and marking a Right Line of an Hundred Leagues, into the Lands of Others, cannot be a kindly Act."

At the end of March, the surveyors go back to work, where they find an uproar over "the great Scandal over the winter involving Tom Hynes, Catherine Wheat, and their Baby." The story of the scandal, which takes up a chapter, owes as much to Mark Twain as it does to the 18th-century novelists like Smollett and Sterne who inform the rest of Pynchon's novel.

Returning to work, Dixon encounters a suspicion that the surveyors may be spies by saying, "'Tis a gormless Spy indeed, who'd lurk where there are no more Secrets to steal. ... What is there that has not been visited, intentionally and not, an hundred times?" Captain Shelby, with whom they left the instruments for the winter, observes that "There is a love of complexity, here in America, ... pur Space waits the Surveyor, -- no previous Lines, no fences, no streets to constrain polygony however extravagant."

Dixon begins trying to learn how to use Zhang's luopan, and notes that Britain is in "the Terrestrial Sign of Draco, the Dragon." But he explains to Zhang that where he comes from, in Durham, dragons "are not at all the Chinese Variety. Some, like the Lambton Worm, lacking Wings and a fire-breathing Capacity, may indeed be of a distinct Species." And he proceeds to tell his version of the legend of the Lambton Worm. Afterward, Captain Shelby alludes to a serpentine mound on the other side of the Ohio which the Indians claim predate their inhabiting the region. He proposes that they investigate some mounds nearer to where they are.

17. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 525-553

Two: America; 54-55

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The narrative abruptly shifts to first person, as our abductee tells us that one evening she was "taken to a Chamber, and there laced into an expensive Corset," her face was "painted ... into a wanton Sister of itself,"... and she was given "undergarments ... that might, Blondelle assur'd me, make a French whore think twice." She is to be taken to "the Chinaman."

If this sounds like porn, it is. Tenebrae "has discover'd the sinister Volume in 'Thelmer's Room, lying open to a Copper-plate Engraving of two pretty Nuns, sporting in ways she finds inexplicably intriguing." Ethelmer claims the book, which is "the next in the Ghastly Fop series," is "something of Cousin DePugh's." She wonders that "a young University Gentleman should find Affection between Women at all a topic of interest." He gives her a synopsis of the series featuring the Ghastly Fop, who to some "seems quite conventionally alive, whilst others swear he is a Ghost.... The Series runs to at least a Dozen Volumes by now, tho' no one is sure exactly how many, -- forgeries have also found their way into the Market." Ethelmer tells Tenebrae that he has read as far as "where she meets the Chinese Boy, and they plan their Escape." He says he will read the next chapter to her. "And so off they minuet, to become detour'd from the Revd's narrative Turnpike onto the pleasant Track of their own mutual Fascinations, by way of the Captive's Tale." 

The tale resumes with the captive's account of a dream, and then shifts to third person as the Wolf of Jesus realizes that the "Chinaman," Zhang, whom he has paired with the captive is fluent in Spanish. Moreover, Zhang is now preparing to escape from the Jesuits and the captive "understands when he will leave, and in the instant decides to go with him." She disguises herself as a boy, and they make their escape. He has with him a "miraculous Luo-Pan," a magnetic compass used in feng shui. They make their way to the home of Sir William Johnson, who recognizes Zhang after he "presents him a curious sort of Metallick Plate" and they "exchange a complicated Hand-shake." She reveals herself to be Eliza Fields of Conestoga.

Ethelmer proposes to skip a page of erotic stuff about Eliza and Zhang, but Tenebrae has already read ahead. Eliza and Zhang journey on, and at this point the fiction of the Ghastly Fop joins up with the narrative of the Mason-Dixon expedition: "they arrive at the West Line, and decide to follow the Visto [the line blazed by the axmen] east, and ere long they have come up with the Party." Zhang asks if she plans to return to her husband. "'Either to the Jesuits, or to him? -- That's my full list of Choices? ...' She twirls her Nose in the air, and departs."

Eliza bunks with one of the camp-followers, Zsuzsa Szabó, who does a show involving "Accordion musick, Dog tricks and Gypsy Dancing" with a machine that recreates the Battle of Leuthen. The surveyors meet Eliza in the tent, Dixon quite taken with the "Deerskin Costume" that she wears, and Mason stunned to discover in her a likeness, indeed a "Point-for-Point Representation," of his late wife. Both Mason and Eliza consult the chaplain of the party, which is Cherrycoke, who "speculates that the Resemblance so confounding Mason is less likely the Transmigration of a Soul, than the Resurrection of a Body, -- enough of its Particulars to convince him 'tis she." Mason is tormented by dreams of Rebekah, and one day concludes that since Eliza's hair has grown back in, she no longer looks like her that much.  Eliza tells him that she and Zsuzsa have decided "to go off and be Adventuresses," and if he passes near Conestoga to listen for the sounds of merriment that will reveal how much her husband, Seth, misses her.

Zhang, meanwhile, is criticizing the survey itself: "Terrible Feng-Shui here. Worst I ever saw. You two crazy?" He means that the straight line, the Visto, "acts as a Conduit for what we call Sha, or, as they say in Spanish California, Bad Energy. -- Imagine a Wind, a truly ill wind, bringing failure, poverty, disgrace, betrayal, -- every kind of bad luck there is, -- all blowing through, night and day, with many times the force of the worst storm you were ever in." Boundaries, he says, should "follow Nature, -- coast-lines, ridge-tops, river-banks, -- so honoring the Dragon or Shan within, from which Land-Scape ever takes its form." He is surprised that a people so given to religion as the settlers in America should allow it.

He tells them of his enemy, the Wolf of Jesus, Father Zarpazo, who is "sworn to destroy all who seek God without passing through the toll-gate of Jesus." Under his direction, they have particularly targeted practitioners of feng shui. Dixon is fascinated by Zhang's luopan, recognizing a fellow "Needle man." When he mentions that Mason is frustrated by the fact that the compass "never points to what he calls True North," Zhang says that Zarpazo is too. "The Impurity of this Earth keeps him driven in a holy Rage, -- Which is why he wants this Visto." He explains that the Visto will draw Zarpazo to it because "Purity of Azimuth is his Passion."

Dixon is puzzled that Zhang should be so opposed to their mission, but he reassures him that "my business is with the Jesuit. We happen to be the principal Personae here, not you two! Nor has your Line any Primacy in this, being rather a Stage-Setting, dark and fearful as the Battlements of Elsinore, for the struggle Zarpazo and I must enact upon the very mortal Edge of this great Torrent of Sha." But so obsessed is Zhang with the struggle against Zarpazo that he has become paranoid, convinced that Zarpazo, "a master of disguise, ... has actually penetrated the Camp, and only waits his moment to administer that poison'd Stiletto preferr'd by a Jesuit confronting Error." His suspicions also include Dixon because "'Tis widely assum'd that you are here on behalf of the Jesuit Le Maire." The Jesuits, he claims, want to "tap into the unremitting torrent of Sha roaring all night and all day, and convert it to their own uses."

Mr. Everybeet, the mineralogist, notes that "west of here, in the Hills 'round Cheat and Monongahela, are secret Lead Mines, which the Indians guard jealously." And that "who controls Lead controls the supply of Ammunition."

Mason and Dixon conclude that Zhang is "a few Links short of a Chain," especially when he begins transforming himself into the image of his adversary, Zarpazo. He wears black robes and begins to grow a small beard, and "Spanish phrases increasingly creep into his Conversation." Mason suggests that there might be trouble if Zhang's presence attracts Zarpazo and that Dixon is the only one who can get rid of him: "He already thinks you're a Jesuit Agent. All you have to do is advise him to stay, and he'll do the opposite." But Zhang claims to have an amulet against the Jesuit that will protect the expedition: "a dark Red sphere about the size of a Cherry" that he claims is a cyst that once grew in the brain of a cobra. "Therefore fear not the Advent of the Wolf, for here is the soul of the Cobra, yet living, yet potent." When Zhang displays it, "'I'll buy one!' Dixon cries. Mason looks upward, patiently."

16. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 491-524

Two: America; 51-53

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Dixon begins wearing a coonskin cap and surprising Mason, who has "a lower order of Snakes-and-Bears Jumpiness," by showing up in the tent with the cap on backward. "Mason's reactions are all he is hoping for, and more." But both are unnerved when "From the Forest now proceed Sounds, real ones, that neither Surveyor has heard before, and that each is too embarrass'd to mention to the other." Dixon thinks it's Indian drums, while Mason thinks it's a dog -- "A particular Dog, with a syncopated Bark.... Oh yes, a Dog well known and much fear'd in this Region." The overseer agrees with Mason: It's the Black Dog, an infamous British incarnation of the devil. Finally, Dixon goes to investigate and returns with the information that it was the Glowing Indian of South Mountain, "Walking down toward Antietam, last I saw. Seem'd a pleasant enough Lad. Not much to say. Too tall, of course...."

On September 1 they hear of a "remarkable Cavern beneath the Earth, about six miles south of the line. In the winter, English Church services are held in it." They go to investigate and Mason records his impressions in his journal, that it strikes "its Visitants with a strong and melancholy reflection: that such is the abodes of the Dead: thy inevitable doom, O stranger; soon to be numbered as one of them." But Dixon's impression is different: "where Mason saw a Gothick Interior, Dixon saw 'pon ev'ry Surface, ancient Inscriptions, Glyphs undreadable, -- Ogham, possibly."

They cross Conococheague Creek and at North Mountain they leave their instruments with Capt. Evan Shelby and begin their return eastward for the winter. "Not till they turn and head east again, do they find any time for rememb'ring anything. Going west has been against all Futurity. Now, moving against the Sun, they may take up again the past." Dixon, trudging into a chill wind, recalls Emerson, who wore his coat backward because "won't half the walking I'm to do in my Life, be into the wind?" He argued,

"The Modern Coat, as we know it, ... is bas'd upon the attire of the Nobility and Gentry and other assorted Thieves, who could ever afford Servants to put their clothes on for them. At such intimate moments, 'twas believ'd more prudent to keep a Servant in front of one, than allow him behind."

Mason, meanwhile, is flashing back to the suppression of the weavers of Stroud: "Some aspir'd to be master-weavers, most would have settl'd for a living wage, but their desires how betray'd, when in 'fifty-six the Justice of the Peace, upon easily imagin'd arrangements with the Clothiers, reduced by half the Wages set by law, and the troubles came to a head." He surprises Dixon by revealing that "Rebekah's people were weavers." And he recalls that the conflict between the weavers and the soldiers was what finally persuaded his father to encourage him to leave for Greenwich and his work as an astronomer.

Mason and Dixon have a common fear of open spaces. Mason recalls "Bisley Common, haunted by wild men and murderers, and its Wind never ceasing, -- a source of limitless Fear." Dixon's was Cockfield Fell: "Ev'ryone put in great effort to avoid crossing it." But Emerson assured his students that they could "get above it" -- i.e., by flying, "but before they learn'd to fly, they had to learn about Maps, for Maps are the Aides-mémoires of flight.... one can apprehend all at once the entire plexity of possible journeys, set as one is above Distance, above Time itself." The students, however, worried about witches such as "the Old Hell-Cat of Raby with her black Coach and six? She can rise above the Land-scape too, -- how does an innocent Cartographer deal with that?" Emerson's answer: "Professional courtesy." But Emerson chided Dixon for "squandering [his] precious Skepticism, over at Raby, upon this Gothickal Clap-trap."

Dixon admits his fascination with "the Old Hell-Cat of Raby, ... Elizabeth, Lady Barnard, who'd died back in '42 after a life of embitter'd family warfare over who was to inherit the Castle, whose Battlements she continued to walk, with a pair of brass knitting-nedles, whilst awaiting her Coach." One night when he was young, Dixon decided to get a closer look at the lady, scaling the castle roof to hear her mutter about the lateness of her coach. When it arrives, the coachman complains of traffic: the swarms of Emerson's flying students. She leaps into the coach and "leans then to stare back out, unmistakably and directly at Dixon, and calls, 'Perhaps another time, Jeremiah.'" That was the first he heard of Emerson, and his motive to study with him so "that 'another Time' [might] happen some Evening when he and Lady Barnard were both aloft."

While still in the mountains, Mason and Dixon "take to sledding in the Year's early snow-Falls, upon folded pieces  of Tent-Canvas" and nearly come to grief when the snow grows so thick that they can't see ahead of themselves. Mason bails out, but Dixon glides uncontrollably on until he collides with the mattresses that are used to cushion the instruments. They spend Christmas at the Harlands' before going their separate ways.

And now the narrative shifts to the story of a woman -- unnamed at least for now -- who is kidnapped by Indians. "The further they took her through the Forest, away from her home and name, the safer she began to feel." They reach the Susquehanna and take to boats, "not Indian Canoes but French-built Battoes, fram'd in Timbers, she was later to learn, that grown only in the far Illinois." They travel northward. "They did not bind, or abuse, or, unless they must, speak to her. They were her Express, -- she was their Message." The snow begins to fall, and they reach "the Shore of some vast body of water that vanishes at the Horizon" where she gets into a bark canoe. "When they arrive at last in Quebec, the Winter is well upon them." She is taken to the Jesuit College, and then, "barefoot, still in Indian Dress, into a room fill'd with books. Père de la Tube, a Jesuit in a violet cassock, speaks to her with a thick French accent, and will not look at her face. Nearby, in smoothly kept Silence, sits a colleague whose relentless Smile and brightness of eye only the Mad may know." De la Tube tells her that the man is a Spanish philosopher who takes an interest in "heretick Women who turn to Holy Mother the Church." Another man enters, and she is told that he is Chinese.
The College in Quebec is head-quarters for all operations in North America. Kite-wires and Balloon-cables rise into clouds, recede into aerial distances, as, somewhere invisible, the Jesuit Telegraphy goes ahead, unabated.... Whenever the Northern Aurora may appear in the Sky, rooftops in an instant are a-swarm with figures in black.... Rumors suggest that the Priests are using the Boreal Phenomenon to send Messages over the top of the World, to receiving-stations in the opposite Hemisphere."

There is some bargaining among the Jesuits, and finally it is determined that she is to become "A novice in Las Viudas de Cristo" -- which is the convent from which Capt. Dasp purchased the slavewoman Mason and Dixon encountered at Lepton Castle whom they took to be Austra. In the convent, she meets Sisters Blondelle, Grincheuse, and Crosier. She tells them that the Indians didn't mistreat her, but she "star'd often at the many ways they had inscrib'd their own Skins, some of the Pictures being most beautiful, others arousing in me strange flashes of fear, mix'd with ... it perplexes me to say ... with feelings of Desire." Thereupon they decide she needs "the Las Viudas Cilice ... a device suggested by Jesuit practice, worn secretly, impossible, once secur'd, to remove, producing what some call Discomfort, -- enough to keep thoughts from straying far from God." It is

the Hothouse Rose, deep red, nearly black, whose supple, long Stem is expertly twisted into a Breech-clout, to pass between the Labia as well as 'round the Waist, with the Blossom, preferably one just about to open, resting behind, in that charming Cusp of mostness and heat, where odors of the Body and the Rose may mingle with a few drops of Blood from the tiny green Thorns, and Flashes of Pain whose true painfulness must be left for the Penitent to assess.

Her hair is shorn and she is promised a wig someday if she's good. "Having already seen other Sisters going about in elaborate Wigs that she imagines must be quite in the current Parisian Mode, she is soon wondering how she might look in one of those powder'd Confections." She sneaks into the wig-room and tries one on, but is caught. And when she replaces the wig on its stand, she realizes that the wig-stand is a skull.

We shift to a scene in which a Jesuit known as "the Wolf of Jesus" is talking to "a roomful of students" about matters such as the Jesuit quarrel with feng shui: "'Why prevent the Chinese from practicing Feng Shui? Because it works,' the Wolf of Jesus is explaining.... "It carries the mark of the Adversary, -- It is too easy. Not earn'd. Too little of the Load is borne by the Practicioner, too much by some Force Invisible, and the unknown Price it must exact."

15. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 460-490

Two: America; 47-50

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By late May, they reach the Susquehanna, where they make attempts to measure the width of the river, finally determining that it's about seven-eights of a mile wide. While they're there a thunderstorm comes up that terrifies Mason, but which Dixon receives with comparative calm.

Now they receive word that they should "return to the Tangent Point, and run the three and a half Miles of Meridian, or North Line, needed to close the Boundaries of the Lower Counties." The orders present young Nathanael McClean, known as Nathe, with a dilemma: He writes a friend that he has fallen in love with a milkmaid whom he calls Galactica, and that the return east will separate them. "For tho' I know next to nothing about the Sex, yet it seems, in my experience, that their reputation for Patience is gravely over-blown, and the faithful sailor's Sweetheart of Song and Romance as mythical as a Mermaid."

For the next three weeks, they are occupied again with the enigmatick Area 'round the Tangent Point, seeking to close the Eastern boundaries of Pennsylvania and Maryland, -- the Commissioners, to appearance, being anxious upon this score. 

Meanwhile, they discuss what lies ahead to the west of the Susquehanna: "Over Susquehanna begins a different Province entirely, and beginning at the Mountains, another differing from that, and so on, -- beyond Monongahela, beyond Ohio." How far they go depends on what the Penns want, Mason observes, "as Maryland's Grant ends just past Laurel Hill, from there West 'tis Penn's Line alone, dividing Penn lands from Virginia, -- who bear none of the Cost." At stake are the iron and coal deposits in the west.

On June 6, they complete the survey that closes the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania to the east, but the ambiguous area known as the Wedge remains, "resulting from the failure of the Tangent Point to be exactly at this corner of Maryland, but rather some five miles south, creating a semi-cusp or Thorn of that Length, and doubtful ownership." But this is no longer Mason and Dixon's problem. They "are order'd back to Susquehanna, this time to continue the West Line 'as far as the Country is inhabited."

Meanwhile, Darby and Cope, members of the surveying team who work with the chain, are so often asked they are the famous Mason and Dixon that they begin to tell people they are. They even argue over which one gets to be Mason and which Dixon -- the latter being more popular. Eventually, "Maidens in varying ratios of Indignation to Curiosity show up in camp, demanding to see Mason or Dixon, or both. Upon meeting the real Surveyors, 'Well, but you're not him, --' '-- nor you the other.'" Eventually, when Darby and Cope are summoned to see Mason and Dixon, Darby blames Cope, and Cope Darby, for perpetuating the misunderstanding. The chainmen fall to blows, but are interrupted by a delegation of angry axmen who have seen the pay-list and want to protest the hiring of "Darby and Cope, Chinamen." Dixon corrects their misreading of "Chain-men."

Before they cross the Susquehanna, they receive a package from Maskelyne, who has sent them "Fr. Boscovich's Book, De Solis et Lunae Defectibus... [inviting] their Attention to a great Variety of Data within, including a Warning as to the Attraction of Mountains.... 'First the Iron-Lodes disable my Needle,' moans Dixon, 'now the Mountains are about to throw off my Plummet?'" But Mason's worry is that "the Western Slopes of Allegheny may prove less distressing than the Windward side of that wretched Island."

On the other side of the Susquehanna, however, nothing seems very different. The iron-rich earth is red, and the story goes that if it's plowed the right way "it becomes magnetized, too, so that at Harvest-time, 'tis necessary only to pass along the Rows any large Container of Iron, and the Vegetables will fly up out of the ground, and stick to it." The entourage of the expedition has grown, "lengthen'd to a suburbs dedicated to high (as some would say, low) living. Gaming, corn whiskey, Women able to put up with a heap of uncompensated overtime, etc. There is even "the Vásquez Brothers' Marimba Quartet, who often play back-up for the Torpedo, to whom it is the musick of his Youth, his home Waters."

But as the summer goes on, Dixon has the sense that they're being "used" in the service of American politics. Mason posits that Maskelyne could be a French spy working for the Jesuits, which Dixon opines is a "Bit sophisticated for me. Tho' I don't mind a likely Conspiracy, I prefer it be formed in the interests of Trade, -- the mystickal sort you fancy is fair beyond me." Mason takes this to be an allusion to the East India Company." This is, however, only a setup for one of Pynchon's atrocious puns:

"Come, Sir, can you not sense here ... the scent of fresh Coriander, the whisper of a Sarong...?"" 

"Sari," corrects Mason. 

"Not at all Sir, -- 'twas I who was sarong."

Now they near the Redzingers' farm, which causes tension between Allègre and Frau Redzinger. For Peter Redzinger has returned to the farm, having lost his vision of Christ. She tries to tell him about the Frenchman and his duck, but he doesn't listen. Apparently Christ has taught Peter to make golems: "Kitchen-size, -- some of them quite clever, the Tasks they do, -- one that peels and cores Apples, -- ja, even pits Cherries."

Cherrycoke inserts a selection from his Spiritual Day-Book about the German sects in Pennsylvania, which seem to generate "spiritual Wonders." Mason and Dixon are about to encounter some of them when they stop at a tavern called The Rabbi of Prague, which is "headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith" that has its own "private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter Shin, and to signify 'Live long and prosper.'"


There is also supposed to be in the neighborhood a Golem "taller than the most ancient of the Trees" that was "created by an Indian tribe widely suppos'd to be one of the famous Lost Tribes of Israel." They've never seen the Golem, "only heard his steps on the nights when there is no Moon, or his voice, speaking from above the only words he knows, -- 'Eyeh asher Eyeh.'"

"That is, 'I am that which I am,' helpfully translates a somehow nautical-looking Indiv. with gigantick Fore-Arms, and one Eye ever a-Squint from the Smoke of his Pipe. 

They also learn about the author of the Pennsylvaniad, an epic in heroic couplets whose work eclipses that of Alexander Pope: "In the Constellation 'Poesia,' Sir, to frame it in more comfortable terms for you, even the Wasp of Twickenham must be assign'd the Letter Beta, for this Timothy Tox who is its Lumina."

But their conversation is cut short as "great Percussions upon the Earth are heard, coming ever closer. Trees, push'd over, crash to the ground. Bears, Bobcats, and Wolves come fleeing before whatever is just behind." And outside, "great Mud Feet are seen to stir, tall as the Eaves."

14. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 422-459

Two: America; 42-46

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Unfortunately, the gambling didn't go well for Mason. Not only did he lose twenty pounds, but he also suffered the indignity of seeing Lord Lepton, "this runny-nos'd, titl'd Savage, tossing their Expeditionary Funds as airy Gratuities to the Slaves." Dixon proposes that they "take something worth twenty pounds" and decides on "a giant Bathing-tub with Feet, Bear Feet in fact, cast at the Lepton Foundry from local Iron." When Mason protests that the thing must weigh half a ton, Dixon reveals that "William Emerson taught things no one else in England knows. Secret techniques of mechanickal Art, rescued from the Library at Alexandria, circa 390 A.D." And to Mason's astonishment, "Dixon seems scarcely to touch the pond'rous Fixture" before one end levitates and the tub is standing "precariously balanced upon a sort of lip or Flange at its other end."

Dixon leaves Mason with the tub while he goes to "reconnoitre," but  soon Mason hears Dixon talking to Lady Lepton in the corridor. "Sighs. Fabric tearing. A merry Squeal." And then music, Handel's "O Ruddier than the Cherry," issuing from "the infamous Musickal Bodice, devis'd by an instrument-maker of London, wherein Quills sewn into its fastening, when this is pull'd apart," play a tune. Mason stands there fuming with the tub while Dixon and the Lady proceed with their dalliance.

But soon someone else appears, fascinated by the tub, which he says is a "quite astonishing Magnet" and "damn' nearly Earth's third Pole." He introduces himself as "Professor Voam, Philosophical Operator, just at present scampering from the King's Authorities." Voam is in possession of a "Torpedo" -- an electric eel, which electrocuted a man in Philadelphia who disregarded warnings not to touch it. Mason is irritated when Voam recognizes him as one of "The Astronomers! Dixon and Mason!" He tries to correct the order of billing, but Voam talks on, pointing out that the tub would be "just the Article to keep Felípe in," Felípe being the Torpedo.

Dixon returns, "emerging coprophagously a-grin from some false Panel in a Wall," and the three of them exit with the tub. In a corridor, Mason is confronted by the slave woman whom Dixon encountered the night before. He recognizes her, but can't believe his eyes. She tells him she was abducted by Malays and sold to the Jesuits, who sent her to a nunnery. "Whence, after my Novitiate, kind Captain D. and I came to our Rapprochement." He admits that he knows who she is -- although the name Austra is not yet mentioned -- but she disappears around a corner.

They enter a room where they find a rifle suspended over the fireplace, and where Wade LeSpark has been resting on a couch. They talk about the rifle, which has an inverted silver five-pointed star on its stock that Mason has seen before, in Lancaster, "upon the Sign of the Dutch Rifle," a tavern. Dixon says they could have taken the rifle instead of the tub, but Mason protests that the silver pentacle means the rifle is cursed. And LeSpark counsels that "taking the Rifle will be far more dangerous, than taking the Tub."

Finally they get the tub outside "where they transfer Tub and Torpedo to a Conestoga Waggon but lately unloaded, with fresh Horses hitch'd up." Only then does Mason ask Dixon, "Did it seem like Austra to you?" And they agree that it couldn't have been. And Voam begins to tell them about the Torpedo, which he says is not an eel but a ray or a skate, native to Surinam, and is also known as "El Peligroso." The professor has been doing a traveling show with the Torpedo, and when they stop at an inn for one, he quickly attracts an audience. He demonstrates the eel's electrical powers by lighting a cigar from the giant spark it produces, but it has a peculiar effect on Mason, who looks directly into the spark and sees "at the heart of the Electrick Fire, beyond color, beyond even Shape, an Aperture into another Dispensation of Space, yea and Time, than what Astronomers and Surveyors are us'd to working with.... Throughout, the Creature in the Tank regarded me with a personal stare, as of a Stranger claiming to know me from some distant, no longer accessible Shore."

Abandoning the Tub, the Professor builds a larger circular Tank, and mounts it upon wheels, so that daily it may be situated directly upon the Line. Felípe then slowly rotates until his head is pointing north. Presently, he has become the camp Compass, as often consulted as the Thermometer or the Clock.

At the end of February they are in Newark when word comes that Maskelyne has been made Astronomer Royal. Mason tries to put on a good face at the news, though for Dixon, "Mason attempting to be chirpy is less easy to bear than Mason in blackest Melancholy." He soon admits that Maskelyne "is unworthy, damn him! to succeed James Bradley." Mason's own aspirations for the post become obvious, and Dixon suggests, "Were I thee, I should make him feel guilty ev'ry change I got. Perhaps he doubts his own Worthiness." Which amuses Mason: "Why bless me, Sir, -- you are a Jesuit, after all. Sinister Alfonso, move aside, -- sheathe that Stiletto, wicked Giuseppe, -- here is the true Italian Art."

In April they begin the West Line and bid farewell to the Harland farm that has been their base of operations. Before they leave, they encounter a stranger named Jonas Everybeet who is fascinated by "the chunk of Rose Quartz where cross the Latitude of the south Edge of Philadelphia, and the Longitude of the Post Mark'd West, -- the single Point to which all work upon the West Line (and its eastward Protraction to the Delaware Short) will finally refer." Everybeet gazes into the crystal and when Mason looks into it he sees a face with "Huge, dark Eyes." Everybeet joins the party as a specialist in magnetic fields, anomalies in which he can discover.

Mason and Dixon are also dogged by a "Body-jobber" named O'Rooty, who specializes in finding workers for the crew, including some Swedish axmen, and a "'Developer,' or Projector of Land-Schemes," whom Dixon suggests they kill. The first day of surveying the West Line is April 5, and in less than a week they have found that the line runs through the house of a Rhys Price, who is away but whose wife has them survey right through the house while she marks the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland within it. When her husband shows up, she announces to him that they were married in Pennsylvania, "So from now on, when I am upon this side of the House, I am in Maryland, legally not ;your wife, and no longer subject to your Authority." Advised that he will have to pay taxes to both Pennsylvania and Maryland, Price decides to put; the house on rollers and move it into one state or the other. And since Maryland is downhill and they will no longer be married there, he chooses Maryland.

Now the mechanical duck makes a return, showing up when Mason makes a disparaging remark about it as a "French toy." The duck steals his hat and is persuaded to return it only when Allègre, who seems to have joined the expedition, persuades it. We also have a glimpse of the crew, including Moses Barnes, the overseer of the axmen, and Nathanael McClean, a handsome young man working during his summer break from college in Williamsburg.

13. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 382-421

Two: America; 38-41

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Mr. Dimdown had been a passenger in the coach -- a foppish young man (a "macaroni" in the contemporary argot) who enjoyed flashing his "hanger" -- a cutlass. He "had been drinking steadily whatever Spirits came to hand, for the three days previous, attempting, as he explains, 'to get the Time to pass differently, that's all.'" His sudden attack on Allègre could have been fatal, but "Immediately, Inches short of its target, the Weapon, from no cause visible to anyone, leaves Dimdown's Grasp and sails across the Room in a slow, some might say insolent Arc, directly in among the blazing Logs of the Hearth, where none may reach."

The duck, it seems, has found Allègre, having developed the ability to fly "ever longer Distances." He explains that he had awakened "to find her perch'd at the end of the Bed, quacking merrily as a Milk-maid." He likens the duck to an angel, which reminds Frau Redzinger of her husband, Peter. But he is grateful after all that he left Europe for America, which he regards as a land of plenty: "the tomatoes, terrapins, peaches, rockfish, crabs, Indian Corn, Venison! Bear! Beaver! To create the Beaver Bourguignon, -- who knows, perhaps even the ... the Beaver soufflé, non?" And when Frau Redzinger reveals that she knows how to cook beaver, he falls in love. It is the making of a triangle: "the incorruptible Pietist, the exil'd Chef, and the infatuated Duck."

They are snowbound in the inn, and Mitzi is flirting with "the stable-hands and Scullery-Boys" as well as helping Allègre in the kitchen. And eventually she flirts with Dimdown, having rescued his sword from the ashes and sharpened it for him. She reports that Allègre "has forsworn Violence in the Kitchen, -- not only toward Meat, but the Vegetables as well, for as little now can he bring himself to chop and Onion, as to slice a Turnip, or even scrub a Mushroom. She also engineers an apology by Dimdown to Allègre

Meanwhile, Mason and Dixon are quarreling again, about Mason's melancholy and Dixon's expanding waistline. So when the snow stops, they decide to go about their mission separately, flipping a coin that sends Mason north and Dixon south. Dixon journeys as far as Williamsburg, where he discovers the colonials in an uproar over the Stamp Act. In "Raleigh's Tavern, Virginians young and old are standing to toast the King's Confoundment." When his turn comes to propose a toast, Dixon comes up with, "To the pursuit of Happiness." This attracts the notice of "a tall red-headed youth" who asks if he might use the phrase sometime. Discovering that Dixon is a surveyor, the young man asks, "are you Mason, or Dixon?" "'Tom takes a Relative interest in West Lines," quips the Landlord, "his father having help'd run the one that forms our own southern border." And so Dixon falls into conversation with Jefferson (though not identified as such in the novel).

Mason travels to New York, where he meets a young woman named Amelia, "a Milk-Maid of Brooklyn, somehow alone in New-York without funds." She "is dress'd from Boots to Bonnet all in different Articles of black, a curious choice for a milkmaid, it seems to Mason, tho', as he has been instructed ever to remind himself, this is New-York, where other Customs prevail." He feeds her  and accompanies her back to Brooklyn, where he finds himself among "an assortment of Rogues weirder than any Mason has yet seen, be it at Portsmouth, or the Cape, or even Lancaster Town." When he reveals that he's an astronomer and that he knows how to repair a telescope, he's asked to repair theirs, which Mason is perplexed to find has been trained on the horizon and not on the stars. The real problem with the instrument, however, is that the lenses have been knocked out of alignment. He agrees to repair it, and "Feeling not quite a Prisoner, Mason works thro' the Day."

Like Dixon, Mason is surrounded by angry talk about the Stamp Act. When someone says, "the Stamp Act is simple Tyranny, and our duty's to resist it,"

Mason expects shock'd murmurs at this, -- that there are none shocks him even more gravely, allowing him a brief, careening glimpse at how far and fast all this may be moving, -- something styling itself  'America,' coming into being, ripening, like a Tree-ful of Cherries in a good summer, almost as one stands and watches, -- something no one in London, however plac'd in the Web of Privilege, however up-to-the-minute, seems to know much about. What is happening? 

More shocking is the suggestion that he is a serf, "As they call it here, a Slave." He resists the idea, but when he tells them he's from Stroud, he's reminded of how then-Col. James Wolfe put down an effort by weavers in Stroud to bring about an increase in their wages:

Mason recalls well enough that autumn of '56, when the celebrated future Martyr of Quebec, with six companies of Infantry, occupied that unhappy town after wages were all cut in half ... and a weaver was lucky to earn tuppence for eight hours' work. Mason in those same Weeks was preparing to leave the Golden Valley, to begin his job as Bradley's assistant, even as Soldiers were beating citizens and slaughtering sheep for their pleasure, fouling and making sick Streams once holy, -- his father meantimes cursing his Son for a Coward.... Mason, seeing the Choices, had chosen Bradley, and Bradley's world, when he should instead have stood by his father, and their small doom'd Paradise. 

Having repaired the telescope, Mason is accompanied to New Jersey by a member of the group, Patsy, who bid him farewell with, "We could be at War, in another Year. What a Thought, hey?"

At this point, LeSpark reveals that he met Mason and Dixon at a "ridotto" at Lepton Castle on the "well-guarded, and in the estimate of some, iniquitous, Iron-Plantation of Lord and Lady Lepton." Mason and Dixon stumble upon the castle by accident, taking shelter one night in a cabin that, like the coach they rode in earlier, turns out to be larger inside than outside. They walk through corridors, hearing "new music, advanced music," and finally reach a grand hall where they are announced to the gathering as "Mr. Mason, and Mr. Dixon, Astronomers of London." Dixon's promotion to astronomer annoys Mason, but they proceed "into what, in London, is term'd an 'Hurricanoe,' -- a thick humidity of Intrigue and Masks realiz'd in locally obtained Fur and Plumage, clamorous with Chatter and what seems now more to resemble Dancing-Music."

Among the crowd Mason "belatedly recognizes the notorious Calvert agent Captain Dasp." Meeting Lady Lepton, Dixon recalls that he had seen her when they were both much younger, at Raby Castle. "Dixon ... is finding all this, to his delight, dangerously interesting."

Somehow this fearlessly independent Girl had then gone on to marry the ill-famed, the drooling and sneering, multiply-bepoxed Lord Lepton, an insatiate Gamester who failed to pay his losses, forever a-twittering, even as he tumbled to ruin in one of the period's more extravagant Stock-Bubbles, summarily ejected from Clubs high and low, advised by friend and enemy that his only decent course would be to step off the Edge of the World. 

Lepton took this to mean "go to America," where he made his fortune in iron. He is also rumored to be a member of the Hellfire Club.

The servants in the hall are black slaves in white wigs -- "black Major-domos and black Soubrettes. One of the latter passes by with a tray of drinks." She looks at Dixon as if she knows him. "For a frightening moment, he seems to know her." And Mason has recognized that Captain Dasp is a French spy. But "no one at the moment has anything but Gaming of one sort or another in mind."

12. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 349-381

Two: America; 35-37

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Cherrycoke and his audience fall into a dispute about the nature of history, which is more or less appropriate, given the nature of his fabulating narrative, in which he reports quite vividly on scenes he can't have seen. But now he rejoins Mason and Dixon.

He tells his listeners that he was traveling in a coach, "a late invention of the Jesuits ... wherein the inside is quite noticeably larger than the outside." (Perhaps it was the TARDIS.) They encounter, walking along the roadside, "two Women, who prov'd to be mother and daughter." They invite them to ride with them, and the mother, who identifies herself as Frau Luise Redzinger, informs them that they're going to Philadelphia to consult with a lawyer. They warn her against the city, but she insists, "Philadelphia, Sirs, can hold little to surprise me. My sister lives in the most licentious Babylon of America, though they are pleased to call themselves 'Bethlehem.'" She disapproves of her sister, Liesele, who has married a Moravian, which she regards as "a gaudy Christianity ... a wonder their minister is not addressed as Pope," at which "the daughter gives a small gasp." One of the passengers, Mistress Edgewise, advises her to forgive her sister.

It seems that Frau Redzinger's husband, Peter, had an accident in which he fell into a pit of "dried hops nearly twenty feet deep, hot from the Kiln," and that the experience transformed him:

As weeks passed, she tells us, Peter Redzinger's account chang'd, from a simple tale of witness, to one of rapture by beings from somewhere else, "long, long from Pennsylvania," as he expressed it, -- and always at the center of the Relation, unwise to approach, an unbearable Luminosity.

He has become an itinerant preacher, with followers known as Redzingerites. But her problem is that their farm is on the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, so she doesn't know for sure which territory it belongs in. "Luise has been been paying the Quit-rents to Pennsylvania," but her neighbor, Grodt, has his eye on the property and claims that "she dwells in Maryland and owes more back taxes there than she can ever pay," in which the land will fall into escheat and Grodt may be able to get his hands on it.

As they discuss Frau Redzinger's problem, the coachman spots an inn up ahead. As it happens, Mason and Dixon are headed there too. "Bickering energetickally, they make their way toward the lights and at length enter the very Inn where your Narrator, lately arriv'd is already down a Pipe and a Pint, -- only to be brought to dumbfounded silence at the Sight of one whom they've not seen since the Cape of Good Hope." Cherrycoke then reveals to them that he has been commissioned as chaplain to their expedition.

The tavern of the inn, which is run by a Mr. Knockwood and his wife, begins to fill up with people coming in out of the snow.

Here congregate all the Agentry of the Province, Land-Jobbers and Labor Crimps, Tool-Mongers and Gypsy Brick-Layers, as well as the curious Well-to-do from further East, including all the Way back across the Ocean. The Waggoners keep together, seeking or creating their own Snugs, and the Men of Affairs arrange for Separate Rooms. Those that remain, tend to run to the quarrelsome.

Mrs. Edgewise, it seems is a magician with "a diverting repertoire of conjuring tricks" who always attracts an eager audience. Her husband is a gambler. Meanwhile, Luise Redzinger's daughter, Mitzi, is asserting her independence, particularly with regard to her hair: "'I want it all different lengths,' fiercely, 'I don't want to fasten it close to my head. I don't want to cover it. I want people to see it. I want Boys to see it.'"

Knockwood, the landlord, greets the astronomers and tells them that Cherrycoke has been talking about them. They explain that they have taken the American work to fill in between the first transit of Venus and the next anticipated one, which Mr. Edgewise pleased to be "able to utter a recently minted word," refers to as a sandwich. But the word causes the inn's French chef, Armand Allègre, to come screaming from the kitchen, proclaiming that the sandwich, "To the Sacrament of the Eating, it is ever the grand Insult!"

The next morning, Luise Redzinger is surprised by the odors of the chef's cooking, though scandalized by his croissants, with their "shameless over-usage of Butter in place of Lard." She is friendly with the chef, however, won over by his offer to show her how he makes his croissants and his demonstration of his rolling-pin. She asks if his job pays well, and he sighs that it wouldn't matter if it were thousands: "Once the most celebrated chef in France, -- now alone, among foreign Peasants and skin-wearing Primitives, with no chance of escaping." Frau Redzinger is fascinated and "has miss'd completely his effect upon Mitzi, who is sitting there flush'd and daz'd." And before an audience "of what, to his mind, must seem unfeeling barbarians," Allègre begins his tale of exile, "his Iliad of Inconvenience."

He was apprenticed to "the greatest chef in France, -- which is to say, in the World," which elicits protests from his audience, but he continues. After years of work he became a chef and "Paris was at my feet." One day a detective, "let us call him Hervé du T.," came to see him. But he breaks off his story when he notices Mason and Dixon, to whom he says, "I was about to advert to your Brother in Science, whom perhaps you have even met, the immortal Jacques de Vaucanson." After a moment Dixon recognizes the name: "the Lad with the mechanical Duck." Allègre tells them that Vaucanson's robotic duck had been provided with "a Digestionary Process, whose end result could not be distinguish'd from that found in Nature." In the audience, a Mr. Whitpot scoffs at "A mechanickal Duck that shits," but Allègre continues.

One day, a servant found the mechanical duck flapping its wings, and "Within an hour, the Duck was well flown." In his "vainglorious Intent" to provide the bird with mechanisms for "Sex and Reproduction," Vaucanson had "somehow nudg'd the Duck across some Threshold of self-Intricacy, setting off this Explosion of Change." So "now the Duck is a Fugitive, flying where it wishes," and it has become so fast in its flight that it becomes invisible.

The detective has come to warn Allègre that the duck has "somehow, quite recently, become aware of you." The chef may be in special danger because of his fame for his duck dishes: "your Canard au Pamplemousse Flambé ... is unique in Civilization." Allègre is advised to wear leather or even chain mail, "its Beak being of the finest Swedish Steel." He realizes that what the detective wants is for him "to act as a sort of ... Decoy? to attract the personal Vengeance of a powerful and murderous Automaton." They they hear "a loud terrifying Hum outside" and the detective runs away. But when the duck arrives, it speaks to him "in a curious Accent, inflected heavily with linguo-beccal Fricatives, issuing in a fine Mist of some digestive Liquid, upon pure Faith in whose harmlessness I was obliged to proceed." The duck addresses him as "the terrible Bluebeard of the Kitchen, whose Celebrity is purchas'd with the lives of my Race."

But instead of assaulting Allègre, the duck wants him to go talk to Vaucanson, who "has hired an Attorney, -- an infallible sign of Hatred." The problem is that the inventor has given him the power to love, but there aren't any other mechanical ducks for him to love -- except for the backup duck Vaucanson created in case this one failed to work. The duck, who reveals itself as female, wants the chef to ask Vaucanson to give his permission to take the other duck, which is "yet sexually unmodified," to the opera. When the duck leaves, Allègre is baffled: "I was a Chef, not a Match-maker for Automatick Ducks. Merde!"

But finding Vaucanson turns out to be not so easy, not to mention that there are others who would like to get their hands on the duck.

Mysteriously, from about that date, I found myself beneath a Protection unseen, yet potent. Thugs who approach'd me in the Street were suddenly struck in mid-Body vigorously enough to throw them for Toises along the Cobbles, where they lay a-cowering, trying to remember their Prayers.... I could attribute such a degree of Protection (in which I fail'd, till too late, to see the component of Love) to nothing but the Duck.... if Angels be the next higher being from Man, perhaps the Duck had 'morphos'd into some Anatine Equivalent, acting as my Guardian. 

Finally, his friends advise him to flee -- he has developed a reputation that makes it no longer possible for him to work. "Paris is no longer for you, my Friend, you belong somewhere else, -- in China! in Pennsylvania!" And so Allègre leaves, and by taking a variety of vessels, "ev'rything from Pirogue to Pirate Ship," finally arrives in Delaware during the dark of the moon. And at this point his story is interrupted:

"Here then, you wretched little Frog!" The Company groans. It is Mr. Dimdown, Hanger in hand. The Frenchman picks up his Hachoir, and raises one eybrow.

11. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 327-348

Two: America; 33-34

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In January, Mason and Dixon set up for observation at John Harland's farm, "thirty-one miles more or less due West of the southernmost point of Philadelphia." Hanson displays  curiosity about the surveyors' work, to the annoyance of his wife, and in March he joins the crew as they move south. He tells his wife to take charge of the planting, "just don't put in too many 'them damn' flowers, is all." When he returns, she has planted an acre of sunflowers.

Here is Harland, among the Sunflowers, having Romantic thoughts for the first time. Bets notices it. He is chang'd, -- he has been out running Lines, into the distance, when once Brandywine was far enough, -- and now he wants the West. The meaning of Home is therefore chang'd for them as well. As if their own Fields had begun, with tremendous smooth indifference, to move, in a swell of Possibility. 

Mason and Dixon have determined the latitude of the westward line: 39° 45' 17.4". But now they are ordered to tackle a more complicated problem: the boundaries that separate Delaware from Pennsylvania and Maryland, which are based on a circle whose twelve-mile radius begins at the cupola of the courthouse in New Castle, Delaware. "One reason given for bringing Mason and Dixon into the Boundary Dispute was that nobody in America seem'd to've had any luck with the fiendish Problem of the Tangent Line." It was a geometrical problem that left a wedge of land disputed by all three territories. The dispute wasn't resolved until 1921.

Mason and Dixon spent most of the rest of the year working on the problem of the Tangent Line, the western boundary of Delaware that was supposed to be at a right angle to the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, but also tangent to the Twelve-Mile Circle. Their solution was to fudge it. So after a December break, they left the Harland farm and moved west to Lancaster, the site of the Paxton Boys massacre. Both of them are outraged by the slaughter of the Indians, but Dixon is the more diplomatic in talking with the locals in a tavern about it.

"These were said to be harmless, helpless people," Dixon points out in some miraculous way that does not drawn challenge or insult in return. Apprehensive among these Folk, Mason, who would have perhaps us'd one Adjective fewer, regards his Geordie Partner with a strange Gaze, bordering upon Respect.

The response is that "They were blood relations of men who slew blood relations of ours," which doesn't satisfy either Mason or Dixon. "'You must hate them exceedingly,' Mason pretending to a philosophickal interest actually far more faint than his interest in getting out of here alive." Dixon changes the subject by remarking on what one of the men is smoking: he has never seen a cigar before. It comes from Conestoga, and hence is called a Stogie.

The next day, before Dixon awakes, Mason goes to visit the site of the massacre and is appalled by it. He tells Dixon that the place had a strange smell.

"These Louts believe all's right now, -- that they are free to get on with Lives that to them are no doubt important, -- with no Glimmer at all of the Debt they have taken on. That is what I smell'd, -- Lethe-Water.... In Time, these People are able to forget ev'rything. Be willing but to wait a little, and ye may gull them again and again, however ye wish, -- even unto their own Dissolution. In America, as I apprehend, Time is the true River that runs 'round Hell." 

Dixon is aware that Mason dislikes America, but he "has been trying to keep an open Mind." But his own visit to the massacre site dismays him, too. "What in the Holy Names are these people about? Not even the Dutchmen at the Cape behav'd this way."

"Whom are we working for, Mason?"

"I rather thought, one day, you would be the one to tell me."