MAP 



3641 



MAP 



in color, and have thick, crisp (but not woolly) 

 black hair. The Maoris, in point of physical 

 development, are among the strongest races 

 known. They ornament themselves by tattoo- 

 ing their faces with fantastic figures, a practice 

 which gives them a wild appearance and makes 

 their faces from a distance appear blue. At 

 one time the Maoris were one of the fiercest 

 cannibal tribes of the South Pacific, and waged 

 many bloody wars with the white people, but 

 since the English seized New Zealand they have 

 greatly altered by contact with civilization, and 

 very little remains of their primitive conditions. 

 Their clothing is much the same as that of the 

 white residents of the islands; they have em- 

 braced the Christian religion, and are indus- 

 trious, intelligent people. 



See the full-page drawing accompanying the 

 article NEW ZEALAND, for the life habits of the 

 Maoris. 



MAP, a picture or diagram that shows the 

 position of places on earth, or of stars in the 

 heavens. If a photograph of the earth's sur- 

 face were taken from an aeroplane in flight one 

 kind of a map would be secured, but it would 

 show many details which must be left off a 

 practical map, for there must be room for 

 printed names of the principal places. On the 

 other hand the photograph map would not 

 show man-made boundaries, and if it included 

 much of the earth's surface it would not show 

 railroads and rivers, which< are small but often 

 very important. 



i The purpose of a map determines the kind 

 and amount of details which are shown. The 

 usual map shows political divisions (countries, 

 states or provinces, counties), cities, mountains, 

 rivers, lakes, coast lines, railroads or princi- 

 pal trade routes. The map of a city shows all 

 its streets. A chart, or sailors' map, tells the 

 location of shoals and other places of danger to 

 ships. A statistical map gives the relative im- 

 portance of places in any one particular (for an 

 example see map of alfalfa production in the 

 article ALFALFA). Maps are also made to indi- 

 cate historical changes (see map showing terri- 

 torial acquisitions in the article UNITED STATES ; 

 also various maps indicating changed political 

 divisions, such as ALBERTA, page 153). 



Contour and Relief Maps. Contour and re- 

 lief maps show the height of the places which 

 they locate. One style of contour map draws 

 lines through points at an equal distance above 

 or below the sea level. Sometimes colors are 

 used to emphasize the differences, blue for the 

 ocean, green for lowlands, brown for mountains. 



The deepest shades mark the highest and deep- 

 est parts. (Contour maps will be found in the 

 articles ASIA, AFRICA, EUROPE, NORTH AMERICA 

 and SOUTH AMERICA.) A relief map is not a 

 drawing but a model in cement or some other 

 hard material to imitate the elevations and de- 

 pressions of land. It cannot, however, represent 

 accurately the steepness of slopes. Suppose, 

 for instance, a relief map of India were made 

 the length and breadth of this page. If it were 

 correct in its proportions Mount Everest, the 

 tallest peak in the world, would be only twenty- 

 five one-thousandths of an inch high, and the 

 map would not be a relief map after all. So in 

 making it we should have to represent heights 

 on a different scale than horizontal measure- 

 ments. 



History. Maps were probably made before 

 writing of any sort was known, for savages 

 sometimes direct explorers by drawing diagrams 

 on the ground with a stick. A map in the Brit- 

 ish Museum, made on clay, is over 4,000 years 

 old. Ptolemy, who lived in the second century, 

 drew better maps than any known till after 

 Columbus discovered America (1492). In the 

 sixteenth century a man in Flanders called 

 Mercator (which is Latin for Kremer, his real 

 name, and means merchant) , corrected and im- 

 proved Ptolemy's work. As methods of meas- 

 uring latitude and longitude (which see) im- 

 proved, much more accurate maps Were drawn. 

 The. first globe was perhaps made by Thales of 

 Miletus, in the sixth century B.C., but after 

 the decline of Greek learning the earth was 

 believed flat till Columbus' discoveries. 



No flat map can accurately represent the sur- 

 face of the globe. On a map of the world made 

 according to Mercator's Projection (see map 

 OCEAN CURRENTS), qn which all points in the 

 same longitude are in the same vertical line, 

 North America appears very much larger than 

 South America because the one is broadest near 

 the pole, where East and West distances are 

 exaggerated by this plan, and the other is 

 broadest near the equator. The custom of rep- 

 resenting North by the top of the map, South 

 by the bottom, East by the right side and West 

 by the left side is copied from Ptolemy. Until 

 recently maps were drawn with an inch or other 

 unit of measure representing a certain number 

 of miles; now they are generally made so that 

 any measurement stands for a definite number 

 of times its own length; for example, a mil- 

 lion. The colored maps in this set of books 

 representing the continents of North and South 

 America, Europe, etc., are drawn to the scale 



