Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
roughly sketched, and not particularly colorful—but that doesn't matter much when you
find out it was George Washington's personal copy of his most crucial victory.
But it's not just cold matters of historical fact that give old maps their allure. Most maps
on the market are, when you think about it, of comparatively recent vintage. Almost none
aremorethanfivehundredyearsold—amereblipinthemarchoftime.Yetoldmapscome
to us with an aura of ancient mystery and romance wildly out of proportion to their actu-
al age. Their mottled parchment is the tawny color of sandstone and mummy linen. Their
novel and faintly untrust-worthy coastlines seem to have arrived from another world alto-
gether: Atlantis, maybe, or ancient Mu. They're not just artifacts; they are relics. National
Geographic recently unveiled an“earth-toned” versionofitsstandardworldmap,basedon
the faded palette of old sea charts. Envisioned as a bit of a novelty, it now outsells the fa-
miliar schoolroom-blue version. The message is clear: we count on our maps to be up to
the minute, but we like them to seem venerable as well.
Studying the six-figure Blaeu world map in the Altea booth, my eye is immediately
drawn to the parts that aren't quite right, the way you might find yourself awkwardly un-
able, in conversation, to stop staring at a wart or a scar. Australia is connected to New
Guinea and then extends southward to the pole, forming a landmass larger than Asia
that the mapmaker called “Terra Australis Incognita.” A broad, imaginary swath through
Canada, the so-called Strait of Anian, provides a northerly route from the Atlantic to Asia,
the mythical “Northwest Passage” that many Europeans died trying to find.
Buttothecollector,thesearen'twarts.Timehasfreedantiquemapsfromtheshacklesof
serving as reference objects, so their mistakes are lovingly prized by collectors, the way a
printing errorcanaddazeroortwotoastamp'svalue. Dealers' catalogs carefully enumer-
ate these little quirks as major selling points. “California appears an island,” reads Altea's
or “the Great Lakes are open-ended to the west.” I'm a little alarmed to find that, if you
go by most eighteenth-century French maps, my Seattle home is underwater, part of a vast
“BayoftheWest”thatthePacificOceanhasapparentlycarvedoutofWashington,Oregon,
Idaho, British Columbia, and Alberta.
Why pay more for a map that's wrong? Some of it is sheer novelty value: a map where
California is floating in the middle of the Pacific makes a great conversation piece in an
L.A. living room. But it's also a charming memento of human ignorance and imperfection.
It reminds us that maps are never completely reliable, should never be mistaken for the
actual territory. Once drawn on one map, a fanciful invention like the “Bay of the West”
would propagate through decades of later maps like a virus, sometimes appearing long
after actual exploration had corrected the original goof. The tiny sickle-shaped island of
Mayda first appeared on sixteenth-century maps just southwest of Ireland; as the oceans
were more carefully charted, it gradually moved westward, toward Bermuda. Remarkably,
