THROUGHOUT MOST OF NEW England it is customary for a man, when he buys a large tract of land, to walk the metes and bounds of the property shortly after he has acquired it.
The walking of the metes and bounds is conducted by a town or local surveyor in the company of the new property owner, as well as all the owners of properties adjacent to and abutting the newly acquired property. This is done so that all the interested parties may meet as neighbors to stake out and reestablish their boundaries, and resolve any outstanding discrepancies.
The local surveyor, who acts as a kind of arbiter and guide, is a man who is able to read the old maps and interpret the code language and all the arcane references that are found within the ancient deeds. He is generally a man well on in years but, of necessity, hale and hearty, for his work is strenuous and keeps him continually out-of-doors. He is full of the folklore of the region and a vast repository of all its history for decades and even centuries.
Many of these venerable figures have been appointed to their jobs for life. Hence all of their adult lives have been spent walking through the woods. Generally they have formidable powers of memory and retain within themselves, even independent of the terms of the deeds of transfer, an almost superhuman knowledge of all the territorial divisions within a given region.
But as with many quaint customs of the past, the local surveyor has had to give way to technology and consequently, as a race of men, they are gradually becoming extinct.