Mapping the World (1981) by PAUL THEROUX

Mapping The World (1981) BY PAUL THEROUX

It is not often that one happens capital of Shensi province. That stone craves silence and becomes xenophobic upon an article that engenders a feeling map is dated in the year called Fo u and inward-looking, demanding tribute of pride in ones chosen career. Su ch an C h a n g , 1 137, but the Chinese had been instead of initiating trade, it loses the will article, however, is the one that follows. making maps for centuries on wood, silk to communicate with the world and be­ W e have received permission from the and paper. The Chinese and the Romans gins to wither of its own egotism. The publishers to reprint. were making maps of their respective Chinese still continued to regard the J . J. H. Hunt known worlds at roughly the same time. world as flat and four-square (though In 128 B.C., Chang Ch'ien, China's first they believed the sky to be round). One From Sunrise With Seamonsters historic traveler, returned home after cannot attribute this to stubborn ignor­ by Paul Theroux, published by having covered the immense distance to ance; after all, it took Europe a thousand Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston. the Oxus (we know it as the Amu Darya) years to accept the notion that the world Copyright © 1985 by the Cap Cod in Central Asia. Chang reported to the was round. Scrivener s Company. Reprinted by per­ Emperor W u on what he had seen, and Yet all of China' s naive geocentric- mission. the emperor named the mountains K'un- ity can be seen in the outrage of the lun, where the Yellow River rose. Imperial Court's scrutiny of a Jesuit map ARTOGRAPHY, THE most in which China was situated in the east­ aesthetically pleasing of the sci­ For the next thousand years, China ern corner. What was the Middle King­ ences, draws its power from was active — a nation of travelers, war­ C dom doing on the far right? Father Mat- the greatest of man's gifts - courage, the riors, conquerors, traders and, inevita­ teo Ricci cleverly redrew his map by spirit of inquiry, artistic skill, man's sense bly, map-makers. W h at was the point of spinning his globe, so to speak, and plac­ of order and design, his understanding conquering if the subject lands were not ing the Celestial empire smack in the of natural laws, and his capacity for sing­ then given a shape, and their rivers and middle, with Europe in the distant west. ular journeys to the most distant places. households described on maps? The That was in 1602. The Chinese accepted They are the brightest attributes and they Chinese word for map, t u, also means the priest's version of the world — it some­ have made maps one of the most lumin­ "plan", "chart" and "drawing". (Our own what resembled their own - but they ous of man's creations. word map has Latin cousins meaning rejected his spherical projection. "napkin" and "sheet".) Chinese cartog­ But map-making also requires the raphy could be ambitious. P e i Hsiu W h e n China lost interest in foreign ability to judge the truth of travelers' (224-271), sometimes called The Father countries her maps became inaccurate, tales. Although Marco Polo's T ravels al­ of Chinese Cartography, did a magnifi­ not to say bizarre. These maps showed lowed early European cartographers to cent map of China in eighteen panels European countries and the United give place-names and continental con­ ("The Map of the Territory of the Tri­ States and Africa as tiny islands and figurations to their maps, the book itself bute of Yu"), and codified map-making sandbars off the Middle Kingdom coast. contained only a tiny sketch map and in Six Principles. His First Principle, an Even in the mid-nineteenth century had many odd omissions (no Great W all, enormous contribution to the art, was Chinese maps depicted the natives of no mention of tea). Columbus had the fen lu , the grid system. these little islands as monstrous and one- Latin version of 1483 among his belong­ eyed, and some were shown with holes ings on his voyages westward — which P'ei's successor was Chia Tan, through their stomachs for their conve­ was why, in Cuba in 1493, he sent a whose masterpiece in 801 was "The Map nient carrying on poles. Around the turn party of men searching the Cuban hin­ of China and Barbarian Countries of the nineteenth century, the Chinese terland for the Great Khan, and on later Within the Seas." Chia was working in accepted that the world was round. It is voyages believed he was coasting past the T'ang Dynasty (618-907), one of the possible, 1 think, to read in this accep­ Indochina (it was Honduras) and about most renowned in Chinese history. It was tance of a new map a profound under­ three weeks aw ay from the Ganges. Col­ very much a map-making dynasty - it standing of their place in the world. umbus was not unique in his misap­ had imperial ambitions, pursuing a policy prehension: cartographic ignorance has of conquest in the west and south. Chia Cartography has always required been universal. There are the many was commissioned to make maps of the utter truthfulness - it is one of its most maps of the Abyssinian kingdom of Pre- conquered territories. Subsequent maps appealing features: crooked maps are ster John, and the maps which show of China for the following few hundred worse than useless, and nothing dates California to be an island (this belief per­ years were based on Chia's ninth century more quickly than the political map sisted throughout the seventeenth cen­ work. ("German East Africa", "French In­ tury). And it was only seventy or eighty dochina", "The Central African Empire", years ago that the Chinese were finally China also exemplifies the w ay car­ "Jonestown"). But until the recent past, satisfied that the world was round. tography can go into decline. As a nation maps have been more than scientific;

"It would seem as though cartog­ raphy were an instinct implanted in PUT A SHINE ON YOUR SNOWSHOES every nation with any claim to civiliza­ tion," the geographer, Sir Alexander FOR ANNUAL MEETING '86 Hosie wrote. He had in mind a map of China, carved in stone, and discovered "THE GREAT SNOWSHOE RACE" in the Forest of Tablets at Hsian, the

THE ONTARIO LAND SURVEYOR, WINTER 1986 17 they have depended on a high level of There were similar maps of and helping us anticipate the problems pictorial art — vivid imagery and lettering Panama, and of course Panama won of dislocation. Maps give the world — and a style of labeling and a concise­ out. But a modern map of Honduras coherence. It seems to me one of man's ness in description that is literary in the shows most of the cartographic detail in supreme achievements that he knew the best sense. this hundred-year-old map to be unful­ precise shape of every continent and filled promises. Anyone who looks at a practically every river-vein on earth long Blaeu is the Rembrandt of geog­ lot of maps becomes highly suspicious before he was able to gaze at them raphy. Most maps, even modern ones, of the designations “Proposed railway”, whole from the window of a rocketship. are beautiful — beautiful in colour and “Road under construction”, “Projected This sense of map-shapes is so contour, and often breathtaking in their highway” — with dotted lines; or that strong it amounts almost to iconography. completeness. They can tell us every­ other heart-sinker, “Site of proposed The cartographer gives features to sur­ thing, and the best ones, from the great Hydro-electric Dam”. These are not fea­ faces, and sometimes these features are periods of trade and exploration — our tures which are found only on maps of resonant. It is easy to see a dependency own is one such period — have always Third World Countries. “The M25 Ring in the way Sri Lanka seems to linger at attempted to do this. In 500 B.C. Anax­ Road” is shown on some maps of Outer the tip of India; Africa looks like one of imander s successor, Hecataeus, made a London, though the road has yet to be its own paleolithic skulls; and some coun­ disc-shaped map — it was a startling il­ finished. The most ominous line of a map tries are, visibly, appendages. W h o has lumination. But maps specialize in such is the one labelled “Disputed boundary”, looked upon Chile and not seen in it an surprises. and it makes one think that there are austere narrowness, or smiled at Dela­ perhaps fifty versions of the world map, ware, or wondered what Greenland is Consider the Ortelius map of China depending on your nationality. Israel has fo r? The shape of a country may condi­ of 1573 - “Regnum Chinae”. It is full of about four different shapes, and on tion our initial attitude towards it, though fictitious lakes, but it accurately places some modern Arab maps it does not exist I don't think any conclusion can be rivers, mountains and cities — enough to at all. guide any explorer or trader to his desti­ drawn from the fact that Great Britain nation. It also includes the westernmost The map of the London Under­ looks like a boy riding on a pig. And portion of America (“America Pars”) at ground is by almost any standard a work position matters, too. It does not surprise 180° longitude, and it shows what we of art — a squint turns it into late-Mond- me that the Chinese called their country know as the Bering Sea. In vivid marginal rian — but it also has great practical value. the Middle Kingdom. It is human to be pictures it tells us about the Far East — After ten years of residence in London geocentric. Every country, to its people, the Great W all is drawn, a Chinese junk I still have to consult this map every time is a middle kingdom — zero longitude, is rendered in perfect detail, a man is 1 travel by tube: the underground system where East and W est begin. And what shown being crucified in Japan for being is too complex for me to hold in my a shock it must be for the Pacific Islander a Christian and keeping the faith (there head. The same goes for the N ew York looking for his country for the first time is a warning in Latin). In a corner is a subway, which is a problem for cartog­ on a world map, and not finding it, and Chinese four-wheeled cart, powered by raphers — at least three recent attempts having to be told that his great island is a sail, and this cart (so the inscription have been made to map it so that it can this tiny dot. The opposite is also remark­ tells us) can also be used as a boat. The be understood and used by a stranger. able. W e have the word of many British map is a masterpiece of practicality and None has succeeded. It remains an in­ people who have spoken of their pride imagination. timidating map. at seeing the Empire verified in pink on a globe. Cartography has the capacity to The map predates the book (even Maps have also given life to fiction. open up countries to world trade. For a fairly ordinary map may contain sev­ From Gulliver's Travels to The Lord of example, throughout most of the eral books' worth of information). It is the Rings, novels have contained maps nineteenth century it was recognized the oldest means of information storage of their mythical lands. Thomas Hardy that a canal was needed in Central and can present the most subtle facts carefully drew a map so that his readers America to join the two great oceans. with great clarity. It is a masterly form could understand his Wessex novels and Mexico and most of the Central Amer­ of compression, a way of miniaturizing so did Norman Mailer when he pub­ ican countries were exhaustively map­ a country or society. Most hill-climbers lished The Naked and the Dead. In these ped and a dozen canals were proposed. and perhaps all mountaineers know the books the map came later, but there is These maps expressed hopes, promises thrill at a certain altitude of looking down an example of a fantasy map preceding and fantasies. On a map by F. Bianconi and recognizing the landscape that is in­ a work of literature. Robert Louis in 1891, Honduras - which could not distinguishable from a map. The only Stevenson wrote, have been emptier — is shown as a teem­ pleasure 1 take in flying in a jet plane is ing go-ahead republic. “Railways under the experience of matching a coastline . . . I made the map of an island; it construction/' it says and you see hun­ or the contour of a river to the corres­ was elaborately and (I thought) dreds and hundreds of miles of track, ponding map in my memory. A map can beautifully coloured: the shape of it two lines from coast to coast. W h o needs do many things, but I think its chief use took my fancy beyond expression; it a canal with such trains! In the Mosquito is in lessening our fear of foreign parts contained harbours that pleased me jungle you have the impression of intense cultivation, and mining, and cattle-graz- ing. Honduras looks blessed — full of VISIT OTTAWA IN FEBRUARY sarsparilla and sugar-cane, and iron, zinc, silver and gold. The word “gold" AND GET YOUR appears on this map sixty-five times, in each spot where it apparently lies in the PASSPORT TO EXPO 86 ground. 18 THE ONTARIO LAND SURVEYOR, WINTER 1986 like sonnets; and with the uncon­ guidebook: it is the ultimate tool of the Ordnance Survey Maps. The whole of sciousness of the pre-destined, 1 ticket- man who wishes to understand a distant Britain is scrupulously mapped. I had the ted my performance Treasure Island country. It can be merciless in its factu- correct sheet. I located South Bowood: . .. as 1 pored over my map of Treas- ality. It can also tell us things that are it was a hamlet of about eight houses. ure Island, the future characters in unobtainable anywhere else. Letters and symbols told me there was the book began to appear there visibly a public house down the road, and a About ten and a half years ago, in among imaginary woods; and their mailbox, and a public telephone. The Singapore, 1 rented a house — sight un­ brown faces and bright weapons post office and school were a mile dis­ seen — in the English county of Dorset­ peeped out upon me from unex­ tant, and the nearest church was at shire. 1 had been to England twice, but pected quarters, or they passed to and Netherbury; but w e would be on a hill, never to Dorset. The village, South Bow- fro, fighting and hunting treasure. and there were meadows all around us, ood, was not mentioned in any The next thing 1 knew 1 had some and footpaths, and not far from us the guidebook. W h a t descriptions I came paper before me and was writing out ruins of an Iron-Age hill fort. The houses across were general and unhelpful. a list of chapters . . . were small black squares, and at last, After a great deal of reading 1 still knew sitting there in the Singapore Library absolutely nothing of the place in which 1 was delighted to find this example for studying the map, I worked out which 1 was now committed to spend six months Stevenson's cartographic inspiration, be­ house would be ours. So I knew exactly with my wife and two small children. 1 cause for two years I worked on a novel where I was going, and all my fears van­ began to wonder if the place existed. — The Mosquito Coast — with a map of ished. W ith this map, I was prepared: Central Am erica next to my desk. W h en It was then that I found some without it, I would have been in darkness. I was stuck for an idea, or when 1 wanted • to reassure myself that my fictional set­ tlements really existed, I studied this map. 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Maps reflect the face of the land. They tell us most things but not every­ thing. Long ago, they were shorelines; and then they were riverbanks; and at last they were territories with a million features. But they have always been sur­ faces figured with routes and sugges­ tions. To the most courageous and imag­ inative of us, these surfaces are eloquent, showing the way to new dis­ coveries. In a sense, the world was once blank. And the reason cartography made it visible and glowing with detail was because man believed, and rightly, that maps are a legacy that allows other men and future generations to communicate and trade.

A good map is better than a THE ONTARIO LAND SURVEYOR, WINTER 1986 19