When the pathfinders came into the territory which is now called the Empire State, they carried muskets and tripods under one arm and Greek dictionaries under the other.

They surveyed all day and scanned all night, skirmishing intermittently with prowling redskins.

They knew something about elementary geometry, too, and you will find evidences of it everywhere, even in the Dutch settlements.

The Dutchman always made the beauty of geometry impossible.

Thus, nowadays, one can not move forward nor backward fifty miles in any direction without having the classic memory jarred into activity.