Famous Maps in the British Museum Author(S): J

Famous Maps in the British Museum Author(s): J. A. J. de Villiers Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Aug., 1914), pp. 168-184 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1779085 Accessed: 11-06-2016 22:36 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wiley, The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal This content downloaded from 192.122.237.41 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 22:36:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 168 FAMOUS MAPS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. such performances. The pages (paies) or medicine men are individuals invested with a reputation of possessing occult powers of divination as well as of healing, and capable of causing disease as well as curing it. In some cases they wield considerable influenee, but at times become victims of the superstitious credulity of the people upon which they trade and thrive. The occurrences of birth, puberty, and death are attended respectively by curious performances as post partum, malingering or indisposition of the male, flagellation of both sexes, and exhumation of the corpse some considerable time after interment, which are only a few of the many extraordinary customs met with. Currents.?It is impossible to state as a definite fact what the current of a river is, as the current of a stream varies according to the conditions prevailing at any particular time. Surface current is in proportion to depth, so that at vasante or ebb, when the stream has subsided 3 or 4 fathoms below refluxo or flood, the current decreases accordingly, further influenced also if rapids or falls exist. At times a subsidiary stream may issue into a main stream with a stronger current than exists at the time in the latter if the former is rising at an earlier date, but its current becomes decreased even though its depth increases, when the rise in the main stream gets under way, as then the waters of the afnuent stream may be held back. Commercial possibilities depend on several factors, as navigability of stream, presence and amenability of natives for work, existence, amount and extent of useful products. For example, caucho negro or black rubber grows on land known as terra firme, land above inundation, but there are thousands of miles of terra firme where no caucho negro is found. It is not unusual for it to occur in places so inaccessible that the hardship, labour, and expense involved in its collecting and transport to a market does not give sufficient return to make it pay. Xeringa or white rubber grows on land known as varzea or vargem, lower lands than terra firme, which is more accessible, and the collecting requires less hard labour though of a more skilful order. Here again, however, the occurrence is sporadic, and even though the valley of a river be " varzea," no xeringa may exist. The apparent obesity of many of the people is due probably to several causes besides idiosyncrasy. Many of the swollen abdomens are due to enlarged spleens, one of the sequelse of malaria, from which an Indian is by no means immune. Much of the dietary of these people consists of coarse, bulky, innutritious food, and this, with the enormous consumption of drinks, both rich and fermented, upon which they subsist, are also contributory causes. FAMOUS MAPS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.* By J. A. J. de VILLIERS, Hon. Secretary of the Hakluyt Society. The object of the paper which I am privileged to read to-night is to draw your attention to the wealth of manuscript and printed maps hoarded up in our national treasure-house, and, owing to the exigencies of space, but seldom seen ; many of these maps have not been publicly exhibited since the Sixth International Geographical Congress heldin 1895, and to geographical Royal Geographical Society, Aprfl 6, 1914. Maps, pp. 174,177, 180, 181. This content downloaded from 192.122.237.41 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 22:36:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms FAMOUS MAPS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 169 students of a younger generation they will therefore be new. In the time at my disposal I can give you but a brief description of the more important of these cartographical rarities, restricting myself generally to those of which no second copy is known or is easily accessible, and it is perhaps hardly necessary to remind you that the collection of maps in the British Museum, though probably the largest and best in the world, is by no means complete, and that there are many famous maps elsewhere. The earliest maps of any importance that are known to us to-day are those accompanying a geographical work written (in Greek) by Claudius Ptolemaeus, who lived in Alexandria during the first half of the second century of our era?between 100 and 141 a.d., and the earliest copy of that work in the Museum was written about the year 1400,1 * curiously near the date of the invention of printing, when we consider how many successive copies (a few of which are still extant) were made during the thirteen intervening centuries. Now, the manner of delineating a country is in reality the same in the maps of to-day as in those of eighteen centuries ago?in other words, and as Nordenskiold succinctly puts it, the alphabet of map-making, the con- ventional signs used by us, are the same as were used by Ptolemy; it is only the finer finish lent by modern mechanism to our cartography that makes the ancient maps look so crude and primitive by comparison. In spite of that crudeness you will already have discovered that the rough picture before you represents the map of Great Britain as drawn by the great cartographer, though it suffers through having been cut in two by the copyist, possibly owing to the exigencies of his vellum; though the southern portion is excellent geography for the period, Scotland trends away too far to the east; Ireland was not included in the map, but was depicted separately on a preceding page. A Latin translation of Ptolemy's work was begun by Emanuel Chry- soloras and finished by Jacobus Angelus in 1410; the first copy we have of this was written about 1450.2 Here again we have Great Britain alone, and judging by the more, though not absolutely, correct delineation of Scotia and its proportions as compared with Anglia, one would imagine the draughtsman to have been born north of the Tweed. As in the earlier copy, Ireland has a page to herself, but the magnified conception of Galway Bay that is seen here I have not met with again except in a Venetian portolano of 1489, which will be shown you in its order. The next copy we have of Ptolemy was written, it is believed, about 1470,3 and though it follows closely, and may indeed have been copied directly from, that of 1400, the improvement in the delineation is striking. In many instances of this nature we have, I think, to thank the unknown copyist. I take again the British Isles as the most interesting to us of the twenty-seven maps contained in the work, and this is the first Ptolemy * The numbers refer to the notes at the end of the paper. No. IL?August, 1914.] This content downloaded from 192.122.237.41 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 22:36:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 170 FAMOUS MAPS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. known to me in which Ireland is included in the picture ; it is also interesting to see the cartographer's conception of the world in the second century? this is the map with which he prefaced his collection. During the thirteen centuries that separate the actual drafting of these Ptolemsean maps and the production of the comparatively beautiful copies we have just had before us the science of cartography had sunk to a low ebb, and with some rare but eminent exceptions the maps drawn as late as the middle of the fifteenth century were mostly of a legendary type and of little geographical value. Of those exceptions I have singled out the most notable in the Museum for representation on the screen. and give them in their chronological order. I will not weary you with the Greek or Latin titles of the various works in which they occur : when this paper is printed they will be included in the notes. This map, showing Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India, and generally those portions of the world of which mention is made in Holy Writ, accompanies a Latin translation made by St. Jerome in the year 388 a.d. of a Greek work entitled the Onomasticon, written by Eusebius before the year 325 a.d. The volume in which it is found4 is a copy written in the middle of the twelfth century, but the map shows, by internal evidence, that it cannot well have been compiled later than the fourth century, con- temporaneously with the work it illustrates.

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