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SECOND GIS EXERCISE, HIST 200 – THE DURBAN-TO-JO’BURG CORRIDOR
Open WebCT, Hist 200, GIS folders, Durban to Jo-burg corridor. “Open” it, hit “Extract” icon, navigate to the drive your USB Flash Drive is in, hit “extract” button. Wait while it extracts data, then turn off WinZip & WebCT page. Open ArcGIS, existing map, browse to “south_africa” folder, choose hist200_saf.mxd file (1 stfile with magnifying glass icon).
Click on all the plusses beside your layer names to expand them to show symbology. All the rest of the steps on this page are things you’ve already done with Mexico, should sound familiar. Turn on “hillshading.” Turn on “elevation (by 100 m).” Double-click layer title, hit Display tab and change to 30% transparent, then Apply; hit Symbology tab and scroll colors down to polychrome with dark brown in the middle, hit Apply. Then hit OK. Turn on “provinces.” Click colored box, change fill color to no color; change outline color to white; change outline width to 1. OK. Turn on “cities (urban areas).” Change fill color to red, outline color to red, OK. Turn on “cities (points).” Change to red. Turn on “roads.” Existing red is nice. Don’t you think. Turn on “railroads.” Fine as is. Turn on “Jo’burg-Durban corridor.” Basic map should now look something like this. If not, raise your hand!
Now practice some labeling.
On the drawing toolbar at the bottom of the screen, go to the capital letter A (the one without underlining) and click on the drop-down arrow to the right of it. Choose the white text box with the little white V coming out the bottom – looks like something a cartoon character would be speaking in (“callout” is its technical name).
Now locate the city of Pietermaritzburg on the map. It’s just NW of Durban. Use the information tool (blue circle with “i” in it); turn off railroads and roads if it helps. Found it? Now click on that white box with the V (“callout”) and then move cursor over red symbol of city of Pietermaritzburg, click once. Type name of city in box, then Enter. Click and drag the name around where you want it. Practicing clicking and dragging the point of the V and then the city name. Finally, go to the bucket of paint symbol, click the drop-down arrow to its right, and change the fill color of the text box to white.
Similarly identify and label Ladysmith, Newcastle, Volksrust, Standerton and downtown Jo’burg, oh, and go back and label downtown Durban. Your map should look something like this:
Now practice with another kind of label, the “new splined text” (it’s in that same drop-down menu by the capital letter A). Turn it on, click a curve along the eastern heights of the Drakensberg, double-click to end it, enter “Drakensberg,” color text yellow.
Now start editing again – “Routes of interest” should still be in Target box – and click second segment of that line all the way from Pietermaritzburg to downtown Johannesburg. If you have map zoomed in so you can closely fit your line to the existing railroad track, and you run out of screen, you can go to the pan (“hand”) tool and click and drag the map, then click on the sketch tool (“pencil”) again, pick up clicking where you stopped before panning. Somewhere in downtown Jo’burg double-click to end. Stop Editing. Save Edits. Then go to full extent (“globe”) to see whole map. You should have a fairly accurate route of Gandhi’s 1893 trip.
Now try on your own to edit “Points of interest” and add such a point at downtown Pietermaritzburg, site of Gandhi’s cold, long, thoughtful evening that was the turning point of his life. If you still like the “star” symbol, a star should appear there if you edit it successfully.
In the same way, try to edit “Areas of interest.” Just southeast of Ladysmith find the town of Weenen (“Weeping,” for the Boer women and children killed by the Zulus in February 1838), and use the sketch tool to draw a rough circle around the town, creating an area of interest.
You now are certified to create your own points, lines (routes), and areas. All that’s left to learn in making a good GIS presentation is how to hyperlink – so on to next page for that.
You can “hyperlink” to all sorts of files – even movie clips or websites (this last only if you’re tied into the web, of course) – but today let’s just practice with photos saved as .jpg files. In your data is a folder called images, with two .jgp files – one called “majuba” and one called “spionkop;” distant views of both battlefields. Your project here is to hyperlink these to your current ArcMap project, hist200_saf.mxd.
Before you can actually hyperlink something to a point on your map, you need to embed a point. The layer on your map called “Photos” is another point file, like your “Points of Interest” layer. So you need to turn it on and Edit it (making sure “Photos” is also the Target layer). Majuba Hill where the Boers defeated the British not once but twice in the first Boer War is near Volksrust, so zoom in on the area around Volksrust. Embed a “Photos” point southwest of Majuba near the white province boundary (if you want to really be accurate, zoom way in, and reading the latitude-longitude scale at bottom right of your map, put it at 29 degrees, 51' 11.06" E, and 27 degrees 23' 18.94" S, and by zooming in close enough you can get right on it, to the decimal – but for this map you don’t need to be so precise.
Now for the actual hyperlinking. Choose Information tool (blue circle with “i”), click on the point you imbedded, then right click on its ID number (a zero, at this point), choose “Add hyperlink,” then navigate to appropriate graphics file (to your Flash Drive, then the folder “south_africa,” then the folder “images,” then highlight the .jpg file “majuba,”, open, click OK.
To see if your hyperlinking worked, try it out with the hyperlink tool (little lightning bolt on tool bar; white when inactive, yellow when there’s something for it to do). Photo should open. Close photo to get back to main map.
If it worked, try hyperlinking the second image, the one of Spionkop, bloodiest battle of the Second Boer War – the one where Churchill, Gandhi and Botha were all on the same battlefield. To locate it, zoom in on the area from Ladysmith to the Drakensberg. Find the city of Roosboom just southwest of Ladysmith; battlefield is little yellow elevation point 12 mi. west of Roosboom (to get the measure tool to measure in miles, go to View drop-down menu, Data Frame Properties, hit the General tab, and change Display from “decimal degrees” to “miles”). Now begin Editing your “Photos” layer, imbedding a point here; save edits. Do actual hyperlinking by instructions two paragraphs up.
Zoom map out to full extent (“globe” tool), choose hyperlink tool (“lightning bolt”), open Spionkop picture. Ridge of battlefield is viewed from north, the Boer-held side. British came up over central ridge, which was convex, providing no natural shelter; Boers raked field from little peaks at left and right which weren’t quite as high but which offered shelter from direct fire.
Final map, then, should look something like on next page:
