(In marking a road, do not be content with marking
the dust--an hour's breeze or a shower will efface it; but take a
tent-peg, or sharpened stick, and fairly break into the surface, and your
mark will be surprisingly durable.) The third of the gipsy patterans is
of especial use in the dark: a cleft stick is planted by the road-side,
close to the hedge, and in the cleft, is an arm like a signpost. The
gipsies feel for this at cross-roads, searching for it on the left-hand
side. (Borrow's 'Zincali.') A twig, stripped bare, with the exception of
two or three leaves at its end, is sometimes laid on the road, with its
bared end pointing forwards.
Other similar marks of direction and locality, in use in various parts of
the world are as follows:--Knotting twigs; breaking boughs, and letting
them dangle down; a bit of white paper in a cleft stick; spilling water,
or liquid of any kind, on the pathway; a litter made of paper torn into
small shreds, or of a stick cut into chips, or of feathers of a bird; a
string, with papers knotted to it, like the tail of a boy's kite--tie a
stone to the end of it, and throw it high among the branches of a tree.
Paint.--Whitewash (which see), when mixed with salt, or grease, or glue
size, will stand the weather for a year or more. It can be painted on a
tree or rock: the rougher the surface on which it is painted, the longer
will some sign of it remain.
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