Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/703

Rh works have an important defect, which strikes the eye at once. They can not comprehend the great changes in the trend of the land toward the different points of the compass; but represent everything as running generally in the same direction. The student must, therefore, make himself accustomed to this straightforward mode of projection, in order to understand them aright. Abundant evidence, nevertheless, exists of the value of these maps in perfectly unknown regions. C. W. Parry acknowledges his obligations to a remarkable Esquimau woman, Iligliuk, for a map by the aid of which he discovered the Fury and Hekla Straits, sailing north from Hudson's Bay. Dr. I. I. Hayes speaks of a rude map of the coast from Cape York to Smith's Sound, on which all the inhabited places of Western Greenland were marked, that was made for him by the guide Hans. Franklin states that in his second voyage the Esquimaux, when inquired of, drew the outlines of the coast on the sand, divided it off by days' journeys, indicated the islands and their size and shape by heaps of gravel, marked the mountains with sand and stones, and inhabited places with sticks, and exhibited so much anxiety to be correct as to consult with each other on points respecting which any of them had doubts.

An autograph map by an Esquimau of his own home may be seen in the Royal Hand-bibliothek at Stuttgart, where it is catalogued under the name of "Niakuntigok"; and I have noticed other drawings of Esquimau maps in Hall, and in the journal "Globus" for 1877.

Drake, in his "Book of the Indians," gives several examples of maps by the North American aborigines. The efforts of these people are of interest enough to deserve a more special account. Drawings in the sand are frequently mentioned as made by them; as, for example, by Mackenzie, by Lieutenant Whipple of the Kiowumis, and by Captain J. Jacob of the Haidas on Vancouver Island. The Indians have not, however, rested satisfied with these primitive methods of representation, but have, like some Esquimaux and Polynesians, made the great step of the discovery of portable maps, and have even made more advanced efforts in this art, and far more extensive applications of it, than the others. Their maps furnish correct data with reference to the roads and coast-lines, and also to whole districts, with the rivers, mountains, towns, and the connecting roads, and have the days' journeys carefully marked on materials of the most diversified character. Heckewelder and De Smet describe maps that were made with ashes and coal on pieces of bark and deer-skin; Hunter saw in Carolina plans of whole districts on the blankets of the chiefs, with the boundaries of the different hunting-grounds carefully marked off. The chiefs of many tribes were in the habit of keeping portable maps filed, and already attached great value to them when they first came in contact with Europeans, certainly before they had had an opportunity to learn the use of maps from them. Travelers of the