down to, but not
into, the surface of the copper plate. The bottoms of these channels
will eventually form the surface of the relief lines in the resultant
electrotype plate, but now appear as dark lines against the whitish
groundwork of the wax.

The engraving tools are made in different sizes, and therefore
channels of varying widths at the bottoms may be cut in order to
produce lines of different sizes. In cutting lines to indicate
rivers,--which must be thin at the source and increase in thickness as
they approach the mouth,--tools are used in graduated sizes. The first
one cuts its own line of equal width for a very short distance, then
another and slightly wider tool is used, the next still wider, and so
on until the river line is completed. In reality a series of steps,
the work is so done that the line appears to the eye to increase in
width evenly and gradually from a very fine beginning to a heavy
ending. The wavy lines indicating hills and mountains are made in
substantially the same way. Special steel punches are pressed through
the wax to the copper to show town and capital marks, and after all
the lines and marks are completed, the plate is ready to receive the
lettering. The name of each individual town, city, state, or river is
set up in printer's type and stamped one name at a time into the wax.
The type is placed in a small tool resembling a vise, which holds it
in perfect alignment and on a perfect level. Tools of various shapes
are used for stamping the names in straight and curved lines. It is
necessary to wet the type to prevent its adhering to the wax.

The plate is then carefully compared with the original copy and after
any necessary corrections have been made it is gone over by an expert
operator, who cuts out any of the channels which may have been
obliterated by the burr of the wax, resulting from pressing in the
names.

We now have a plate in which the lines have been cut in small channels
and the names stamped with type. This is a matrix, or mould, from
which an electrotype of the lines now sunken in the wax may be made in
high relief for printing, but the blank portions of the wax are so
thin that it is first necessary to fill in all these places on the
plates with wax in order to produce a sufficiently deep electrotype
plate. This is done by "building up" the plate. A small hook-shaped
tool, heated over a gas jet, is used to melt small pieces of wax which
are run carefully around all