LECTURES. 125 



Nevertheless, though completeness ought to be our aim, still it is 

 evident that this completeness must have its limits. The number of 

 maps which have been published of the New World and its parts is 

 so extremely great, that the labor of procuring them all would be 

 enormous. At the same time, tlie value of individual maps is so very 

 different, that while some form more or less essential links of a com- 

 plete chain, others are so valueless for the purpose contemplated that 

 we may, without regret and without loss, refuse them admission to 

 our collection. 



It is necessary, therefore, to make a critical selection ; and to guide 

 our choice in this respect, we may first divide all the maps that pre- 

 sent themselves for admission into two great classes, namely, maps 

 made by discoverers, navigators, and travellers on the spot, and maps 

 which were afterwards composed at home, from the original sketches, 

 by official geographers and learned map-makers. In selecting from 

 that most interesting class of documents, maps from actual survey, we 

 should use great caution in rejection, while a certain severity of criti- 

 cism is allowable and even demanded in admitting maps formed by 

 compilation. 



When an explorer penetrates into a new and hitherto unknown 

 region, everything that he hears and sees, all that he collects and 

 puts down in his journals and maps, has an especial interest. How- 

 ever rude his draughts may be, they comprise all that is known of that 

 region for the time being. They are liable to be copied and imitated. 

 a hundred times over, and in this way often become of high historical 

 interest, even when in many respects false, on account of the influence 

 they have exerted on the geography of their age. 



Thus, to take a very striking example, the famous Baron La Plontan 

 was certainly, in many respects, but little entitled to credibility. He 

 composed, and published in his work, a very fanciful map of one of 

 the great western affluents of the Mississippi, and of another adjoining 

 river, flowing towards the west, to a supposed great salt lake. Accord- 

 ing to his own statement, he drew this map partly from actual survey 

 and partly from a report, and a sketch on a deer skin, given him by his 

 Indian friends. This map departs very widely from nature, and yet 

 it is a not unimportant document in the history of American geogra- 

 phy. As the baron was a bold and enterprising traveller, wlio soon 

 became celebrated throughout Europe, his book and accom{)anying 

 maps were repeatedly published, and attracted so much attention that 

 thousands implicity believed what he reported of regions which were 

 not visited again for a long time after. His fanciful map was adopted 

 by geographers, copied many times, and inserted in all the maps of 

 America of that time. We could not understand these maps without 

 a look at the original draught of Baron La Hontan, which was the 

 source of all those erroneous conceptions. Even as late as the latter 

 part of the eighteenth century, we find maps reproducing La Honton's 

 great river and salt lake. In a documentary history of American 

 geography, therefore, this map, which, erroneous as it was, exerted 

 so great an influence on map-making, should, by all means, find a 

 place. 



The same principle is applicable to many similar cases, as, for in- 



