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Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 12:18:47 -0600
From: Steven R Holloway <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: 1:1 scale maps
Sender: Steven R Holloway <[log in to unmask]>
Brendan Whyte wrote: I remember a story (it may have been from Lewis
Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland) who wrote about a place that
had a superb map of the countryside. Unlike ordinary maps, which usually
are one inch=one mile (or some other scale), this one had a scale of 1:1
(that's right...one inch=one inch). However, they couldn't use the map
very often, because the farmers complained that it blocked out the sun.
This was either Carroll, or Oscar wilde. I would like to know the exact
reference if anyone knows. It isn't in 'Alice' itself anyway.
and Steven Holloway replied: I believe the refernece is from The Little
Pince. He made a 1:1 map of his little planet. There may be another
reference but I seem to remember reading it there.
and Darius Bartlett replied: Sorry folks, but no it was not The Little
Prince. The source of the "1:1" scale map is indeed Louis Carroll - it
features in "Sylvie and Bruno Revisited".
Only six inches! exclaimed Mein Herr. We very soon got to six yards to
the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the
grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale
of a mile to the mile!
Have you used it much? I enquired.
It has never been spread out, yet, said Mein Herr: the farmers objected:
they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So
we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does
nearly as well. Now let me ask you another question. What is the smallest
world you would care to inhabit?
and Brendan Whyte wrote: The 1:1 map IS from Lewis Carroll's "Bruno and
Sylvie Concluded", when Mein Herr digresses on a map he had in his
pocket... your confusion with the Little Prince may come form the
continuation of Bruno and Sylvie from the maps, to discuss the smallest
possible planet:
the story went on that 2 armies on this tiny planet were fighting. A routed
B, and B fled. but being so small, the fleeing B's ran into the triumphant
A's returning home, and the A's thought they were caught between 2 armies,
and so the A's routed in terror, and the B's "won".
Actually it turns out that the source I was thinking of is from
Jorge Luis Borges's Dreamtigers; (1964) translated from El Hacedor (The
Maker) by M Boyer and V Lange. My ed is from by Dutton (1970). Clearly
after Carroll but original in itself. How I got this confused with the
Little Prince I will never know. A student of mine reminded me of Borges
and I pulled out my old and worn copy of Dreamtigers and read ...
p90. On Rigor in Science
"...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography reached such Perfection that the
map of one Provience alone took up the whole of a City, and the map of the
empire, the whole of a Provience. In time, those Unconscionable Maps did
not satisfy and the Colleges of Caartographers set up a Map of the Empire
which had the size of the Empire itself and consided with it point by
point. Less Addicted to the Study of Cartography, Succeeding Generations
understood that this Widespread Map was Useless and not without Impiety
they abandoned it to the Inclemencies of the Sun and of the Winters. In the
deserts of the West some mangled Ruins of the Map lasted on, inhabited by
Animals and Beggars; in the whole Country there are no other relics of the
Disciplines of Geography.
Suarez Miranda: Viajes de Varones Prudentes,
Book Four, Chapter XLV, Lerida, 1658."
Steven
Steven R Holloway ----------------------------- http://www.tomake.com
The University of Montana Department of Geography 406 243.4508
ToMake Studio on Clark's Fork of the Columbia 406 728.9546
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