Anyone familiar with these quotations?

“Below the roads run the surveyors' lines which squared off the wilderness, and not only made it ready for sale but constructed a shape for county and state government.”
― Andro Linklater, Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy

“And that survey is the one we all go back to. When you find one of their original corners, it is like a handshake with the past.”
― Andro Linklater, Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy