[BITList] The lie of the land: when map makers get it wrong – in pictures | Books | The Guardian

[michael J Feltham]

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> https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2016/nov/16/the-lie-of-the-land-when-map-makers-get-it-wrong-edward-brooke-hitching-in-pictures?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=200074&subid=5050029&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2016/nov/16/the-lie-of-the-land-when-map-makers-get-it-wrong-edward-brooke-hitching-in-pictures?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=200074&subid=5050029&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2>
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> The lie of the land: when map makers get it wrong – in pictures
> Edward Brooke-Hitching• Wednesday 16 November 2016 10.49 GMT 
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> The history of cartography is littered with mistakes, myths and mendacity. From the magnetic mountain at the north pole to Australia’s inland sea, Edward Brooke-Hitching charts five centuries of misrepresentative maps
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> The Island of California
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> Maps have always reflected more than geography – there’s plenty of room among the continents and islands of the world for human error, dreams and deceit. A Spanish voyage along the North American coast in 1533 sparked a myth that California was an earthly island paradise, entirely separate from the North American mainland. Despite contradictory reports from explorers of the region, California continued to be depicted as an island on maps until 1747, when King Ferdinand VI of Spain was forced to issue a decree that ‘California is not an island’
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> Patagonian Giants
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> Another strange myth haunted maps from the 16th century, of a nine-foot race of giants native to Patagonia. Ferdinand Magellan first reported oversized men and women during his circumnavigation in 1522, and sightings of the giants continued up to 1766, when John ‘Foul-Weather Jack’ Byron and his crew of the HMS Dolphin claimed an encounter during a South American expedition. Their claim was even supported by Matthew Maty, secretary of the British Royal Society, who wrote in a letter to the French Academy of Sciences: ‘The existence of giants here is confirmed’
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> The Nuremberg Chronicle
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> Other mythical humanoid races thought to exist in distant parts can be found on this map, which accompanied the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. The fanciful beings, originating from stories of antiquity, include a six-armed man, a six-fingered man, a centaur, a four-eyed man from a coastal tribe in Ethiopia; a dog-headed man from the Simien Mountains and a Cyclops
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> Photograph: Altea Gallery
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> Rupes Nigra
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> The idea that compasses point towards a magnetic mountain at the north pole dates to the Romans. Gerardus Mercator’s map, published in 1595, shows a mountainous island of magnetic black rock at the pole that was 33 miles wide, encircled by a sea pouring into the Earth. These details came from a summary of a missing book, Inventio Fortunata, an Oxford friar’s account of a journey undertaken in 1360 around the north Atlantic. No copies of this travelogue survive, but it seems to have been an extraordinary work of the imagination
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> Saint Brendan and the whale
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> Another tale that decorates mapping is the voyage of Saint Brendan, one of the five immrama (sea-tales) of early Irish lore. The sixth-century abbot was said to have navigated the Atlantic, overcoming demons and creatures while discovering various islands. At one point, he and his brethren take refuge on an island when suddenly the land shifts and they realise they are standing on the back of a giant whale, which begins to dive as they hastily make their escape. Saint Brendan’s Island appeared on maps well into the 17th century
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> Bermeja
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> Some cartographic inventions enjoy even longer lives. ‘The great Mexican mystery’ of the island of Bermeja was first marked on Spanish maps in 1539. It appears on this map, published by HS Tanner in 1846, just above the ‘x’ in the label Gulf of Mexico. Nobody paid the ‘blondish or reddish’ island much attention until the 1980s, when the Mexican government hoped it might establish their claim to rights for oil. They kept searching for it until 2009, when a final expedition reluctantly concluded that the island was a phantom
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> Australia’s inland sea
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> Some maps are purely speculative, but the cartography can be striking nonetheless. This map accompanies Thomas J Maslen’s The Friend of Australia (1830), a work of pure theory in which the English writer suggests that there could be a wealth of river and fertile paradise lying hidden in the heart of Australia. The centrepiece of this colonial fantasy is a great lake the size of a small sea, placed plum in the desolate centre of what is now known as the Simpson Desert
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> Photograph: Hordern House
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> Map of the Square and Stationary Earth
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> This 1893 map presents an even wilder theory, illustrating Professor Orlando Ferguson’s literal interpretation of bible passages to mean the world was both flat and square. The reference in Revelations 7:1 to angels standing in ‘four corners of the earth’ indicated the world’s level nature, he claimed, while Isaiah 11:12’s mention of ‘four quarters of the Earth’ proved its square shape
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> Photograph: Library of Congress
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> Benjamin Morrell
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> The inventions of the American sea captain Benjamin Morrell were more deceptive. During his voyages in the 1820s, Morrell displayed a knack for discovering and exploring islands that never existed. Only open water is found at the coordinates for ‘New South Greenland’, ‘Byers’ Island’ and ‘Morrell’s Land’, earning him a reputation as ‘the biggest liar in the Pacific’
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> The Territory of Poyais
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> And then there is the lord of liars. In 1822, Gregor MacGregor strode into London and pulled off the greatest con of the 19th century, if not of all time. The self-proclaimed ‘Cazique’ of Poyais sought investment in his newly established South American country. Two ships of British colonists set sail, having sold their worldly belongings to buy Poyais land from MacGregor. On arrival at the coordinates provided, they discovered only a malarial swamp. Only a handful of the 270 settlers made it back to Britain alive
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> Edward Brooke-Hitching’s book covers ‘the greatest myths, lies and blunders on maps’ and is published by Simon & Schuster
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