Walter Map

“ The islands are open as a map, and you see the puffs of smoke from the rifles on the Schützen Insel. It is a striking but disappointing view, for notwithstanding the ancient gables and various towers that shoot aloft, the city has somewhat the aspect of a collection of factories, so monotonous are the long lines of white, many-windowed wall, bearing their long slopes of bright red roof. Street after street stretching away, all of the same character, and scattering on the outskirts into a tame country, cruelly disappoint your expectations of the picturesque. ”

“ I wrote the title of his map, and at four o'clock we went to Beale's to the clubb; at six I went to the school and finished his map, and he, as a satisfaction, promised me a half-a-crown. At nine he returned to Heathfield, carrying with him my Little's Introduction to Astrology. He gave me directions to write to Mr. White of Rotherfield, to demand Raleigh's History of the World, which he had in his hands."
The profession of a conjuror a hundred years ago was by no means uncommon, nor does it seem to have been thought a discreditable one. ”

“ Maps are the essential apparatus of Kultur, and every educated German is a geographer in a sense that is true of very few Englishmen or Americans. He has been taught to see in maps not merely the conventional boundaries established by scraps of paper, but permanent physical opportunities—'ways and means' in the literal sense of the words. His Real-Politik lives in his mind upon a mental map. The serious teaching of geography in German High Schools and Universities dates from the very beginning of Kultur. ”

“ I propose to give a brief account of what we knew about it before the time of Gerard Krehmer, better known by his Latinized name of Mercator, who produced a large map of the world more than three centuries ago.
It is generally thought that the art of pictorial representation is older than the art of writing, and, if this be so, it is probable that the art of representation by maps is very ancient. Such delineations are in use among very primitive peoples. The Esquimaux understood the charts of Parry and Ross, and the North American Indians make rude maps, which they find serviceable to them. ”

“ Commercial considerations are not to be overlooked; cheap and rapid methods of reproduction bring their temptations as well as their advantages to bear upon cartography. Their advantages are manifest; the map, whether as an adjunct to travel or as a graphic illustration of a great variety of subjects, has become a commodity of almost daily use. But in some countries, such as the United States, the standard of cartography generally is as low as that of the maps of the survey is high. ”

“ Map Projections are dealt with separately below. It will suffice therefore to point out that the ordinary needs of the cartographer can be met by conical projections, and, in the case of maps covering a wide area, by Lambert’s equal area projection. The indiscriminate use of Mercator’s projection, for maps of the world, is to be deprecated owing to the inordinate exaggeration of areas in high latitudes. In the case of topographical maps sheets bounded by meridians and parallels are to be commended. ”

“ Clearness and distinctness, every one must feel, are not the strong points of modern cartography, hence the use of sketch-maps: such as this of Spain, scribbled on a sheet of foolscap to keep him in mind of the graceful, swinging coastline and the proportions of the provinces.
The overloaded modern map is a work of reference—it is a dictionary, not a book. Ruskin felt that it was useless for educational or literary purposes, and he was continually trying to improve away the detail and to substitute graphic statistics. ”

“ RUSKIN'S MAPS
Reading the map is as great a pleasure to some people as reading a story-book. You will see them pore over the atlas for an hour together, going on dream-journeys. It is a cheap way of globe-trotting, and gets rid of the discomforts; only one must have imagination to turn the wriggling hair-lines into vistas of river scenery, and the woolly-bear shading into forested crests and peaks against the sunset. It needs a good deal of imagination to get over the ugliness of most modern maps; but why should maps be ugly? ”

“ Alphabetical printing is far from being the only use the Boston press is put to. The arithmetical, geometrical, and musical signs are as easily prepared; and there is an atlas which far surpasses any illustrations of geography previously devised. The maps made in Europe are very expensive, and exceedingly troublesome to prepare, the boundaries of sea and land being represented by strings glued on to the lines of a common map, pasted on a board. The American maps are embossed; the land being raised, and the water depressed ”

“ Maps that fold lie generally but one way, and are mostly of strong paper, so that when they are doubled by an inattentive hand, contrary to the original fold they got at binding, they break, and come asunder in quarters and square pieces, the map is destroyed, and the book ever after incomplete; whereas, even if this misfortune happens to a map placed in the Appendix, it may either be taken out and joined anew, or replaced at very little expence by a fresh map from the bookseller. ”

“ To this day, notwithstanding all that has been done by two or three exceptional map-houses in this country, if you want a good map, conveying accurately and yet graphically the fundamental contrasts, you must have resort as often as not to one of German origin. The reason is that in Germany there are many cartographers who are scholarly geographers and not merely surveyors or draftsmen. They can exist, because there is a wide public educated to appreciate and pay for intelligently drawn maps. ”

“ When the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras said that man was born to contemplate the heavens, the sun, and the moon, he might have added also the earth and its formation in all its details, and enjoined on his disciples the necessity of representing the result of such contemplations by maps and charts. We require a map fully to understand the geography and chorography of a country; hence a study of the maps made by contemporaneous makers becomes the duty of the writer of New Netherland history. ”

“ From Eggischhorn to Rieder Alp. From Rieder Alp to Bell Alp. From Bell Alp to Brieg.
If you want more details than our map supplies, procure the sections for the district of General Dufour’s map. It is a map which is almost a picture. It gives the contour of every mountain and valley, and indicates every châlet.
Everything with which we have to do has, or ought to have, its science. So therefore it is, or ought to be, with enjoyment. Anticipation in this science counts for something. The brute only it is who goes straight to the main point first, and at once. ”

“ Mercator's principal title to fame rests upon his invention of the method of drawing maps, which is known as Mercator's Projection. Under this system the map represents the earth as an unrolled cylinder, and the poles are remanded to infinity. The parallels of latitude and the meridians are drawn as straight lines, crossing one another at right angles. ”

“ When dealing with maps not drawn on an equal area projection we substitute quadrilaterals bounded by meridians and parallels, the areas for which are given in the “Smithsonian Geographical Tables” (1894) , in Professor H. Wagner’s tables in the geographical Jahrbuch, or similar works.
It is obvious that the area of a group of mountains projected on a horizontal plane, such as is presented by a map, must differ widely from the area of the superficies or physical surface of those mountains exposed to the air. Thus, a slope of 45° having a surface of 100 sq. m. ”

“ We read how the truths have appealed to his own consciousness. It stands where the relief map itself stands, as representing the delineator’s own mental image of such structure.
There are no lines drawn in this map that contradict or confuse the meaning; all is direct, truthful and clear in statement of fact. Each line has its own particular meaning. If represents direction. Applied to land surface, a vertical line means a perpendicular mountain or side wall of plateau, horizontal lines indicate level areas, and oblique lines a sloping surface. ”

“ But the renewal of the study of map-projection was mainly owing to German mathematicians, such as Werner of Nuremberg, and Apianus, in the first two decades of the century. In Mercator’s work there are to be observed various tendencies towards modern practice, such as the abolition of the old small sketches or miniatures representing towns and divers other subjects, and the introduction of symbols. On the other hand, the period of the application of criticism by the cartographer to the data before him was not yet come. Mercator was content to supplement data, where imperfect, by imagination ”

“ In spite of the fact that the requirements in history state that geographical knowledge will be tested by requiring the location of places and movements on an outline map, in spite of the fact that almost every set of questions for nine years has demanded map work, the papers of candidates have shown that instruction in geography, including the use of maps, has been signally neglected. ”

“ The habit of locating the events recorded, of tracing upon the map the route of an army, or the line of an important road or canal, and observing the impediments or natural obstructions to be overcome, with the great advantages to be derived therefrom, together with inferences as to the time and labor required, has the effect of making the study of history of living interest, especially if the map used indicates such surface structure. ”

“ It is good for us all to know the position of New York and Rio and Calcutta on the map, without its being necessary for us to understand, far less to work out for ourselves, the observations and calculations which fixed their latitude and longitude. Knowledge of the map is a good thing in itself, though it is a very different thing indeed from the technical knowledge which enables a man to make a chart of an unknown region, or to explore and survey it. Furthermore, it is a form of knowledge far more generally useful. ”

“ Ordnance maps of the United Kingdom are plotted, a meridian being chosen for a group of counties. It is also used for the 1-in., 1/2 in. and 1/4 in. Ordnance maps of England, the central meridian chosen being that which passes through a point in Delamere Forest in Cheshire. This projection should not as a rule be used for topographical maps, but is suitable for cadastral plans on account of the convenience of plotting the rectangular co-ordinates of the very numerous trigonometrical or traverse points required in the construction of such plans. ”

“ The construction of a map virtually resolves itself into the drawing of two sets of lines, one set to represent meridians, the other to represent parallels. These being drawn, the filling in of the outlines of countries presents no difficulty. The first and most natural idea that occurs to one as to the manner of drawing the circles of latitude and longitude is to draw them according to the laws of perspective. Perhaps the next idea which would occur would be to derive the meridians and parallels in some other simple geometrical way. ”

“ The scale of that map, as determined by the equator or centre meridian, we will suppose to be 1:125,000,000, while the encircling meridian indicates a scale of 1:80,000,000; and a “mean” scale, equal to the square root of the proportion which the area of the map bears to the actual area of a hemisphere, is 1:112,000,000. In adopting a scale for their maps, cartographers will do well to choose a multiple of 1000 if possible, for such a scale can claim to be international, while in planning an atlas they ought to avoid a needless multiplicity of scales. ”

“ Topographical maps and plans are drawn on a scale sufficiently large to enable the draughtsman to show most objects on a scale true to nature. [2] Its information should not only be accurate, but also conveyed intelligibly and with taste. Exaggeration, however, is not always to be avoided, for even on the British 1 in. ordnance map the roads appear as if they were 130 ft. ”

“ Separate maps of countries and bits of countries, as for example, northwest Germany, are not so instructive as large composite maps. It is better to look at Europe as a whole than at Europe in detail. Nevertheless, a tiny book-page map of the world or Europe or America or Asia, is of very little value. There is no merit in the miniature map. The bigger the map the better—up to a point. It should not be so large that one needs a ladder to examine Greenland. ”

“ Measurement of Distance.—The shortest distance between two places on the surface of a globe is represented by the arc of a great circle. If the two places are upon the same meridian or upon the equator the exact distance separating them is to be found by reference to a table giving the lengths of arcs of a meridian and of the equator. In all other cases recourse must be had to a map, a globe or mathematical formula. Measurements made on a topographical map yield the most satisfactory results. Even a general map may be trusted, as long as we keep within ten degrees of its centre. ”

“ When the compass came into general use on Italian ships in the thirteenth century, it naturally led to the development of an entirely new type of map, the Italian sea-charts or compass-charts, which were to be of fundamental importance to all future cartography. The mediæval maps of the world already mentioned were learned representations which were of no practical use to the navigator. The Greeks had drawn land-maps which were also of no great use at sea, and we do not know that they had sea-charts. ”