SIMON WINCHESTER STER .iON WINCHE + �racture Zone n Jr and the Madma Holy Terror THE MAP -ican Heartbeat Noble Lordships 1nes of Empire Sun NeTJ er Sets Diary: Argentina ns mg: Here Be Drago Miracles Through the Land of PacificRis ing Small World acific Nightmare WORLD World at the Center of the William Smith and the Birth ofModern Geologg Perennial An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishm HAROLD READING FOR Ilwstrations!f P Copyright and illustrationSounacknowledgments Vannitlione follow page329. A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers. TI:IE MAP THAT CHANGED TI:IE WORLD. Copyright© 2001 by Simon Winchester. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. HarperCollins books may be purchased foreducational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollinsPublishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. First Perennial editionpublished 2002. Designed byKate Nichols The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows: Winchester, Simon. The map that changed the world : William Smith and the birth of moderngeology / by Simon Winchester; illustrations by Soun Vannithone-lst ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-06-019361-1 1. Smith, William, 1769-1839. 2. Geology, Stratigraphic­ History. 3. Geologists-Great Britain-Biography.I. Title. QE22.S6 WSS 2001 550'.92-dc21 [BJ 2001016603 ISBN 0-06-093180-9 (pbk.) 0-00-639422-1 (Canadian edition) 02 03 04 05 06 +/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Illustrations xi Prologue xv One Escape on the Northbound Stage 1 Two A Land Awakening from Sleep 11 Three TheMystery of the Chedworth Bun 27 .Four TheDuke and the Barone�s Widow 42 Five A Lightin the Underworld 59 Six TheSlicing of Somerset 79 Seven The Viewfrom York Minster 92 Eight Notes fromthe Swan 106 Nine TheDictator in the Drawing Room 121 Ten The Great Map Conceived 139 Eleven A JurassicInterlude 163 Twelve TheMap That Changed the World 192 Thirteen An Ungentlemanly Act 222 Fourteen The Sale of the Century 239 X CONTENTS 251 Fifteen The Wrath of Leviathan 465 Sixteen The Lost and Found Man 281 Seventeen All Honor to the Doctor 291 Epilogue Glossary of Geological and Other Unfamiliar Terms Found in ThisBook 303 Sources and Recommended Reading 311 317 Acknowledgments 321 Index Map insert follows page 140. :,LUSTRATIONS .s 181 188 unStr eet 205 L Prison 259 ;,is 271 ·Museum 274 Prologue 277 edal 283 ['heatre 293 ,tonework at mmons 296 Scale 302 bove �ne of th� n.1any grand mar­ ble staircases within the east wing 6>.P INSERT of Burlington House, the great .am Smith's achievement can be amply PalladianA mansion on the north side of aring his greatmap of 1815 with the one London's Piccadilly, hangs a pair of huge sky British Geological Survey. The similarity blue velvet curtains, twisted and tasseled silk tail-visible even at a scale where much ropes beside them. Although many may Psilocerasplanorhis proof absolute of the accuracy and wonder in passing, rarely does any one of the vork, yet does not admit of the one signal scores of people who climb and descend the stairs inquire as to :: two productions: that while the survey w at lies behind the drapes. A blocked-offwindow, perhaps? A � _ 1e labors of thousands, William Smith's pamtmg too grotesque to show? A rare Continental tapestry, y and a half before, is the result of the faded by the sunlight? mination of one man who worked for Once in a while someone curious and bold will demand a lways entirely alone. look, whereupon a functionary will emerge frombehind a door marked Private, and with practiced hand will tug gently on the silk ropes. The curtains will slowly part, revealing an enormous and magnificent map of England and Wales, engraved and col­ ored-in sea blue, green, bright yellow, orange, umber-in a beguiling and unfamiliar mixture of lines, patches, and stippled shapes. "The German Ocean," it says to the east of the English coast, . mstead of today's '�North Sea." There is, in an inset, a small xvi PROLOGUE PROLOGUE Xvii cross-section of what is said to be the underside of the country tions of its day. It was, like so many other grand projects that sur­ fromWales to the river Thames. Otherwise all is readily familiar, vive as testament to their times-the Oxford English Dictionary, comfortingly recognizable. The document is exquisitely beauti­ the Grand Triangulation of India, the Manhattan Project, the ful-a beauty set off by its great size, more than eight feet by Concorde, the Human Genome-a project of almost unimagin­ six-and by the fact that it towers-looms, indeed-above those ably vast scope that required great vision, energy, patience, and who stand on the staircase to see it. The care and attentionto its commitment to complete. detail is clear: This is the work of a craftsman,lovingly done, the But a signal difference sets the map apart. Each of the other culmination of years of study, months of careful labor. projects, grand in scale, formidable in execution, and unassail­ At the top right is its description, engraved in copperplate able in historical importance, required the labor of thousands. flourishes: "A Delineation of The Strata of England and Wales The OED needed entire armies of volunteers. To build the with part of Scotland; exhibiting the Collieries and Mines; the Concorde demanded the participation of two entire govern­ Marshes and Fen Lands originally Overflowed by the Sea; and ments. More men died during the Indian triangulation than in the Varieties of Soil according to the Variations in the Sub Strata; scores of modest wars. The offices at Los Alamos may have illustrated by the Most Descriptive Names." There is a signature: housed behind their chain-link fences shadowy figures who "By W. Smith." There is a date: "Aug" 1, 1815." would turn out to be Nobel laureates or spies, but t:hey were all This, the official will explain, is the first true geological map hemmed in by immense battalions of physicists. And to attend to of anywhere in the world. It is a map that heralded the begin­ all their various needs-be they bomb maicers, plane builders, nings of a whole new science. It is a document that laid the lexicographers, codifiers of chemistry, or measurers of the land­ groundwork for the making of great fortunes-inoil, in iron, in were legionsupon legions of minions, runners, amanuenses, and coal, and in other countries in diamonds, tin, platinum, and sil­ drones. ver-that were won by explorers who used such maps. It is a map The incomparably beautiful geological map ofl815, however, that laid the foundationsof a fieldof study that culminated in the required none of these. As vit.µ as it turned out to be for the work of Charles Darwin. It is a map whose making signifiedthe future of humankind, it stands apart-because it was conceived, beginnings of an era not yet over, that has been marked ever imagined, begun, undertaken, and continued and completed since by the excitement and astonishment of scientific discover­ against all odds by just one man. All the Herculean labors ies that allowed human beings to start at last to stagger out from involved in the mapping of the imagined underside of an entire the fogs of religious dogma, and to come to understand some­ country were accomplished not by an army or a legion or a com­ thing certain about their own origins-and those of the planet mittee or a team, but by the single individual who finally put his they inhabit. It is a map that had an importance, symbolic and signature to the completed document-William Smith, then real, for the development of one of the great fundamental fields forty-six years old, the orphaned son of the village blacksmith of study-geology-which, arguably like physics and mathemat­ from the unsung hamlet of Churchill, in Oxfordshire. ics, is a field of learning and endeavor that underpins all knowl­ And yet William Smith, who created this great map in solitary edge, all understanding. endeavor, and from whose work all manner of benefits�om­ The map is in many ways a classic representation of the ambi- mercial, intellectual, and nationalistic-thenflowed, was truly at xviii PROLOGUE PROLOGUE xix first a prophet without honor. Smith had little enough going for people-know about the man he had discovered. He reported him: He was of simple yeoman stock, more or less self-taught, that he was hidden, incognito, in the depths of the English coun­ stubborn and visionary, highly motivated, and single-minded. tryside. He supposedly had no expectation that anyone would Although he had to suffer the most horrendous frustrationsdur­ now ever remember, or would ever recognize, the solitary mas­ ing the long making of the map, he never once gave up or even terpiece that he once had made. He imagined he was doomed to thought of doing so. And yet very soon after the map was made, suffer an undeserved oblivion. he became ruined, completely. But on this occasion his pessimism was misplaced: The mes­ He was forced to leaveLondon, where he had drawn and fin­ sages that had been sent did get through-with the consequence ished the map and which he considered home.