[ganoxg] cartography of new BRUNSWICK 319 



maps are so generalized and distorted that one ma}' find in them support 

 for ahnost any theory hf desires to establish, and, as in all other depart- 

 ments of human activity, cartography has many aberrations to show, 

 whose interest is greater to the psychologist than to the cartograjiher 

 himself. 



If. On the Sources of E)ror in the Interpretation of Old Maps. 



Amongst sources of error in map-study must be placed first of all the 

 fact, that the men who made the maps and those who are studying them 

 belong to different ages, nations and professions, each having cus- 

 toms, superstitions, and political surroundings of its own distinct from 

 those of the other ; and it is impossible for the student to place himself 

 in the mental attitude of the mapmaker, a condition which is necessary 

 for a full understanding of many of the things which the latter did. 

 Equally difficult is it for students in their Avell-appointed libraries, with 

 perfect modern maps before them, to understand wh}' explorei's acted in 

 the remarkable way they sometimes did, coasting past the open passages 

 they were seeking, missing important features of the topography, and 

 locating land where none existed. We forget the entire ignorance of the 

 stiilor of the land he is exploring, how short a distance men can see from 

 a ship, how deceptive fogs are.^ how completely high land hides every- 

 thing behind it, how hard it is to tell headlands from islands, and bays 

 from straits ; how differently the same feature looks from the opposite 

 directions.' AVe forget that thn explorers did not look down upon a 

 country as we do on a map, but at a tiny bit of it edgewise.-' In interpre- 

 ting the maps of explorers, the student needs to try to project himself 

 into their mental condition, something which he can do the better if he 

 is himself something of an explorer, or at least has himself gone over 

 the route of those whose voyages he is investigating. How different 

 does a place seem to one when he visits it, after having formed his image 

 of it through reading or by viewing its site upon the maps. Hoav unsafe a 

 guide, then, to the sensations of an explorer is a modern map ! 



^ For cases in which explorers liave been deceived by fo^-banks, see these Tran- 

 sactions, VII., sect, ii., p. 21, foot note. Kohl Discovery, p. J6, and the very striking 

 case mentioned l)y Nansen in liis Farthest North, American Ed., II., 548-550. Also 

 see Nature, LVI., 59.5. 



"As to the different discoveries made by sailors going in one direction, as com- 

 pared with those going in the other, Kohl (Discovery, 276) says: "A discoverer sailing 

 along our coast from south to north would be likely to make different discoveries, 

 to enter ditlerent ports, to be arrested by different impediments, from one sailing from 

 north to south." 



3 Even so great a student as Harrisse sometimes trips in this regard, as when he 

 identifies Fagundes' Auguada Bay with the entrance to the river St. Lawrence. (Dis- 

 covery, 185 ; compare Dawson's Voyages, 52.) 



