16 EARLY MAPS. 



recognised but for the name, " S. Lorenzo," which is marked 

 upon it. The towns shown on the map, six in number, are 

 true medieval strongholds, with walls and gates, and crowded 

 with spires and towers, one of them boasting of a grand 

 cathedral! — while they are all on such a scale that they 

 would be disproportionately large even if the island were 

 only two or three miles wide. Similarly gigantic ships, with 

 banks of oars, are depicted along the coast, and strange sea- 

 monsters are here and there seen emerging from the waves 

 around the island. From its very incorrect outline I am 

 strongly inclined to think that it is of considerably earlier date 

 than that given in the catalogue, viz., 1570* (Venice), the 

 more so as another map, also Venetian, and dated three years 

 earlier (1 567), is far more correct in outline, and the principal 

 capes, bays, and rivers can be recognised, and are tolerably 

 accurate, as far as regards the coast-line. 



Another very curious old map, to a small scale, is given in 

 the quaint German work of Megiser's already referred to. 

 But I find that it is taken from an earlier book, a neat little 

 atlas of maps, with descriptions of the different countries, 

 entitled Thresor de Chartes, and dated 1602. 



A glance at several of the numerous maps of Madagascar 

 that have been published since these dates would lead one to 

 suppose that what is stated above as to the incompleteness of 

 our knowledge of the country was all a mistake. On many 

 of these we find the so-called provinces defined with a minute- 

 ness resembling that of the divisions of the counties on an 

 Ordnance map of England ; the rivers, with their tributaries, 

 are all unhesitatingly laid clown, and mountain chains of sin- 

 gular regularity and wall-like straightness cross the country 

 in all directions. Far from imitating the ingenuous confessions 

 of ignorance shown on some maps, where — 



" Geographers on pathless downs 

 Put elephants instead of towns," 



many of these early maps of Madagascar are, strange to say, 



* I am confirmed in this opinion by a further reference to the catalogue, in 

 which a note of interrogation is affixed both to the date and the place of pub- 

 lishing. 



