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Dear MAPS-L subscribers:
        I am a cartographer in Vancouver with a special affinity for Dracula (and
anything else vampiric). I had made a full colour map of Transylvania as a
school project a few years back (at COGS in Nova Scotia), and one problem has
bothered me ever since. In Dracula, a fictional novel, author Bram Stoker went
to great lengths to make sure as much of his detail as possible was authentic,
including the town of Bistritz (or Bistrici) where character Jonathon Harker
passed through on his way to the Castle of Dracula. It is admitted that Stoker's
Castle Dracula was fictional and only loosely based on any other real castle,
but the location of said castle is given as the Borgo Pass, located in the
Carpathian Mountains east of Bistritz. I did not, and still do not have access
to any Romanian topographic maps that may show such a feature, and it certainly
does not appear on any general purpose atlases. However, many authorities on
Dracula have been making the unverified assumption that the Borgo Pass does
indeed exist...I would like to settle the matter and either put it on the map
(at least my own copy) or send a few letters to the "experts" if it is indeed
fictional! Anyone interested in helping me out?
 
                                        Sean D. Smith
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