REFORMATION OF CARTOGRAPHY IN FRANCE 135 



the Society of Jesus, when they entrusted him with the pre- 

 paration for publication of the surveys of the provinces of 

 China, upon which members of the Order had been at work 

 since the later years of the seventeenth century. In many 

 instances these were based upon astronomical observations for 

 position, but in others were simply route surveys. From these 

 maps, Western Europe obtained the first reasonably accurate 

 and comprehensive conception of the geography of a large 

 part of eastern Asia. With the aid of these sectional surveys 

 D'Anville compiled a general map of the Empire of China. 

 The maps, forty-six in all on sixty-six sheets, accompanied 

 the 'Description geographique' of the Chinese Empire com- 

 piled by J. B. du Halde from the Jesuit reports, and were later 

 issued at Amsterdam with the title 'Nouvel Atlas de la Chine', 

 1737. An English edition of Du Halde with versions of the 

 maps appeared in 1738-41. D'Anville's share in this Atlas was 

 that of a compiler; but the efficiency of his general method of 

 work was displayed by his map of Italy, 1743, based upon a 

 critical study of Roman itineraries and measures of length. 

 The result was to reduce the area of the peninsula by * 'several 

 thousands of square leagues", and the accuracy of his deduc- 

 tions was strikingly confirmed by geodetic observations later 

 carried out in the States of the Church by order of Pope 

 Benedict XIV. 



D'Anville's notable maps were those of the continents, 

 North America, 1746; South America, 1748; Africa, 1749; 

 Asia, 1751; Europe, in three sheets, 1754-60; and a general 

 map of the world in two hemispheres, 1761. The outlines and 

 positions of the continents, being based on the same data, 

 differed little from those of Delisle; their merit is displayed 

 in the treatment of the interiors. On the map of Africa, for 

 example, D'Anville went far beyond Delisle in removing the 

 conventional and largely fictitious topography, and his repre- 

 sentation stood until the great journeys of the nineteenth 

 century inaugurated a new era in African cartography. D'Anville 

 took the correct view that the Blue Nile, rising in the Abyssinian 

 highlands, was not the principal branch of the Nile. Refusing 

 to break completely with Ptolemy's ideas, he depicted the main 

 river issuing from two lakes in the Mountains of the Moon, in 



