Note on Maps xvii 



nents, seas, and other fixed geographical units. And to make matters 

 worse, the maps we do have, if thus turned around to suit any par- 

 ticular voyage, are usually on projections totally unsuited to a 

 proper understanding of these relationships. Nothing can be more 

 misleading than a map of the world on the Mercator projection if 

 viewed only in part, and from an unusual angle. 



When delving into old records about the early voyages of the 

 Basques, and reading the modern commentaries upon them with a 

 view to summing up the theory that they reached Newfoundland 

 and thus America before the time of Columbus (see page 140), but 

 before I had drawn a map of the North Atlantic as seen from the 

 Bay of Biscay, whence the Basques sailed, I had the preconceived 

 notion that the achievement was well-nigh impossible because three 

 thousand miles of open Atlantic intervened. Nothing can be further 

 from the facts, as a glance at an aquacentric map of the North At- 

 lantic (see page 138) from the point of view of a Basque codfisher 

 will show. Such a map — drawn on a projection that shows actual 

 distances and true directions — immediately reveals that the voyage 

 to Newfoundland was "straight ahead" for nine tenths of the way 

 and then "half left." Further, it can also be seen that almost the 

 whole passage had been traversed yearly for at least four hundred 

 years by the Norse going back and forth to their Greenland col- 

 onies — which they stopped doing only at the end of the fifteenth 

 century — and thus entailed only an extra short hop across the Lab- 

 rador Basin. This route had been followed previously by Thorfinn 

 Karlsefni and others, five hundred years before. Finally, by follow- 

 ing the everlasting and perennially reliable "Westerlies," the Basques 

 would then be blown almost straight back to Iceland and thence to 

 Ireland on a single tack. 



The ten maps which will be found in the body of our story are 

 designed to show the sea-countries concerned in whaling from this 

 point of view. Each is provided with a series of notes on the par- 

 ticular points of interest it brings, to light. There remains then the 

 world map forming the end papers of this book. This is on a fairly 

 standard projection and is orientated in the conventional manner 

 with north at the "top." It also calls for some special comment here. 



As our earth is a sphere, no true representation of it can be put 

 upon a flat surface like a piece of paper. Something has to be 



