84 THE OCEAN RIVER 



there is a kind of persistent cross reference in the succeeding 

 histories of who said what and when. In fact, much of the 

 intellectual progress of the Mediterranean world — just be- 

 cause its paths and connections were those of seafaring people 

 — is to be found in the history of early map-making. When so 

 little was accurately known, a new map was of necessity a new 

 picture of the intellectual progress or regression of the issuer. 



To begin with, as early as the time of Archimedes, an as- 

 tronomer called Aristarchus hazarded the theory that the earth 

 moved round the sun in a circle. There is only hearsay to prove 

 this — no writing — but it nevertheless suggests that ideas and 

 theories have deep roots in the human mind, even though this 

 was eighteen hundred years before Copernicus made the the- 

 ory stick as fact. So also we hear of early experimentation with 

 the lodestone or magnetic needle that was the forerunner of 

 the modern compass; and the simple astrolabe from which the 

 modern sextant has developed is first mentioned by Ptolemy 

 in the second century a.d. 



What we know of the earliest maps is largely by word of 

 mouth. Parchment was scarce and fragile. Maps were carried 

 by soldiers and sailors and travelers on risky journeys; their 

 chance of survival was slight. Master maps, useful for military 

 or trade purposes, were what would now be called ''top secret,'' 

 and rather than part with them men destroyed them. They 

 were wrapped in sheets of lead ready to be heaved over the side 

 if an enemy attacked. 



Many volumes have been written by their contemporaries 

 and later scholars pointing out how faulty and wrong the map- 

 makers have always been. We should be glad of it, because the 

 bold, imaginative early map-makers were men thinking on 

 paper, drawing what they knew and what they suspected would 

 turn out to be true after fresh discoveries. As much as anyone 

 else the makers of maps were instigators of intellectual ad- 



