Untitled

OF WORLD CONTINENTAL LAND SURFACES

Mary Lynette Larsgaard

Map and Imagery Laboratory, Davidson Library

University of California, Santa Barbara

mary@sdc.ucsb.edu

Planimetric Mapping: A.D. 1800-1900

Overview

The nineteenth century is characterized by the exploration of the continental interiors - as opposed to the mainly coastal exploration from the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century - and by the development of national large-scale topographic surveys (Dickenson and Howarth 1933, chapter XIV). Most of the last mentioned occurred in Europe, but some small parts of Asia (India, Japan, the East Indies), the United States, Canada, Egypt, and north Africa were surveyed. Exploration picked up its pace, as explorers all over the world, particularly those from Europe, worked their way toward the continental interiors.

Planimetric Mapping of Africa: A.D. 1800-1900

In 1800 the interior was still largely unexplored and unmapped, except by those with powerful imaginations. All that Europeans knew of Africa was its coastal fringe, river courses of the Congo and the Zambezi, Abysssinia, and northern Africa, which were settled or had been visited by Europeans. About 1800, a clarion call went out to persons interested in being explorers; northeast and northwest Africa teemed with them, 374 of whom were to die there between 1800 and 1894. This influx was at least partly due to the founding in 1788 of the Association for Promotion the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, which regularly dispatched investigators to blank spots on the map. Economics, politics, and the fillip added by such touches as Arab slave traders drove the explorers onward and inward (Bettex 1960, pp. 291-92).

Quite possibly a prime requirement for explorer status was the possession of a cheerful, optimistic insanity, as witness the following quote from Mungo Park (a young Scots doctor who in 1795 and 1796 explored the area of the Gambia and the Niger), while somewhere near the Niger:

... worn down by sickness, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, half naked, and without any article of value by which I might procure provisions, clothes or lodging, I began to reflect seriously on my situation.

(Baker 1967, p. 303).

It was such attitudes that changed Africa from an almost unexplored continent in 1825 to a continent marked cartographically by considerable inroads, especially in the northwest and south, by 1900 (Sohn 1901, p. 349).

At the beginning of the century, the Dutch were expanding into the interior from the south, the French from Senegal, and the British from the Gambia; logically enough, East Africa was the last portion of the continent to be visited. European interest in Africa had increased tremendously, and Europeans were filled with curiosity about the River Niger and its course, and the trading centers of western Sudan (which would remain a mystery until well into the century), two of the many attractions that enticed the explorers into the interior. New discoveries were relatively rapidly incorporated onto contemporary maps, in actuality recording the spread of European culture (Bettex 1960, p. 291; Tooley 1952, p. 49).

Walker in his 1811 universal atlas showed Lake Tanganyika only one degree of longitude away from its actual location; all the great African lakes became better known as "the caravans of Arabs and Swahili penetrated the interior in search of slaves and ivory" (Ravenstein 1891, p. 310). Burton, Speke and Gant, Liviginstone, Baker, and Stanley placed the lakes properly on the map (Tooley 1952, p. 49; Linke 1970, p. 229; Cartwright 1976, p. vii).

The coast and a narrow strip of the interior of Madagascar were surveyed in 1832, but little else was done in terms of exploration or mapping again until 1865, when A. Grandidier identified and mapped the major features from that date to 1870 (Baker 1967, p. 362). In south and especially central Africa little progress was made until 1848, mostly because the chief colonizers of the area, the Portuguese, had not tried to open up the country; between 1849 and 1889 the map was transformed, with the English (notably Livingstone and Stanley) and the Germans very active, especially in hunting down the source of the Nile. The same time period in north and east Africa was relatively quiet other than for the opening up of the Nile Valley by Napoleon's forces; Somaliland and southeast Abyssinia were still little known by 1889, but the last decade saw some attempt to fill in the major features of these areas on the map (Baker 1967, pp. 309-311).

In the 16 years following 1864, the whole of South Africa was explored and mapped, though Namibia and a blank portion south of Basutoland remained unexplored (Anderson 1884, p. 19). In 1862 Bandeira's map, at a scale of 1:2,000,000, showed the course of the Zambezi from Sesheke (the capital of the Makololos) to the mouth (Malte-Brun 1862, p. 390). Most of what remained after 1875 was in the north-central portion (especially the Sahara) and far south Africa (Debenham 1960, p. 238; Adams 1907, p. 310).

Between 1880 and 1890 tremendous strides were made, although south of the Congo was still an area of uncertainty, and the source of the Zambezi was still unsure (Schirmer 1892, pp. 57, 63, 67). By 1887 the Congo valley was in some measure known. South Africa's major features were known by 1889, largely due to the extensive activity in Bechuanaland, the Orange Free State, the Transvaal, Southern Rhodesia, and Mashonaloand caused by the Dutch and English exercising of territorial imperatives (Baker 1967, pp. 343-45, 349).

The great western European powers used Africa as a proscenium arch for their political rivalries, and consequently exploration and mapping proceeded fairly quickly. By 1890 the Cape Colony, northern Nigeria, and the Nile delta and Nile Valley south about to El Minya had undergone detailed surveys (Bartholomew 1890b, map following p. 574).

The Sahara did not allow any considerable intimacy until after 1890, when the French took on its exploration. At this point, the major features of the continent were known except for the Sahara, much of the northeast corner excluding classical north Africa, and the Nile-Congo divide. Major features of the desert were well known by 1900, in part because the French had made use of a bequest specifically for Sahara exploration (Baker 1967, pp. 303; 352, 358).

By 1898 the blank spaces in the Cameroons had been filled in, but three-fourths of Madagascar was still unknown. By 1899 a map of the Congo at a scale of 1:2,000,000 had been issued. So industrious had the Europeans been in the pursuance of their goals - knowledge of the Congo system, of the regions between the Congo, Niger, and Nile, and of the area west of Lake Tanganyika - that by 1900 the exploratory work was fundamentally finished. Strangely enough, the areas near the coast were explored last, toward the end of the century, largely because of the practice of using the great African rivers as highways of exploration (Baker 1967, p, 325-43, 346, 362).

Planimetric Mapping of Australia and New Zealand: A.D. 1800-1900

Although Australia had been discovered in the early seventeenth century, no separate maps of it were made until the nineteenth century (Tooley 1961, p. 119; Baynton-Williams 1969, p. 142). In 1800, most of the coastline, except for an area in the south between Eucla and Melbourne bordering the Great Australian Bight, was known; between 1801 and 1803, the south and east coasts were finally mapped. The first exploration and mapping attempts were directed toward the southeast and the next to the northeast, followed by attempts to cross the continent from south to north, and last of all by excursions to the interior. Australia gained by being one of the last of the continents to be explored, for the work was done in a relatively objective manner, with improved techniques and instruments and therefore accurate latitudes and occasionally even accurate longitudes. By about 1810 major features such as rivers began to appear on the map, as explorers worked in the coastal regions and the Murray and Darling rivers, which both originated behind the eastern mountains (Bettex 1960, front endpapers, pp. 271-72; Ballard 1972, p. 28; Lister 1970, p. 117).

Matthew Flinders, who late in the previous century had explored the coast of Australia from King George Sound to Arnhem Bay and thus completed the charting of the coast, suggested the name "Australia" as a substitute for "New HOlland" (Dickenson and Howarth 1933, p. 129; Schilder 1976, p. 204). About the 1830s, inland features began to be inserted on general maps (Tooley 1979b, p. xiii). In 1835, a map of the 19 counties in New South Wales (in three sheets) at a scale of eight inches to one degree, was published (Fletcher 1968, p. 311). At about the same time Edward John Eyre began his explorations into the interior (Wynd and Wood 1963, figure 22). By 1860, all of humid Australia and the main features east of a line drawn from Albert River to Spencer Gulf were known. Matters moved along at such a rate that the first attempt at a trigonometrical survey occurred in 1865; the survey actually took place from 1873 to 1916 (Fletcher 1968, p. 312). The 1870s were a time of transcontinental journeys, no less than five across the central desert. By 1875 Australia's major features were generally known, although there was still a large gap in the center of the continent (Dickenson and Howarth 1933, p. 13; Baker 1967, pp. 428-33). In fact even to 1896 five large areas remained "absolutely blank," encompassing 350,000 square miles - 250,000 in west Australia and 100,000 in south Australia - requiring for their exploration:

placing at my command funds up to [pounds symbol] 20,000, and camels as many as were needed, time being no object so long as we found work to do. We were not to neglect the mapping of any unmapped region.

(Lindsay 1896, p. 619)

Unfortunately this scheme fell through; complete exploration waited until a quarter of the way into the twentieth century.

In 1800 New Zealand's coasts were appearing on maps with some degree of accordance with actuality. Little exploration of the interior was done until after 1839, and it was not until the 1850s and 1860s that the eastern seaboard to the lake district was mapped and the alpine regions explored, putting an end to the mythical features on maps of Otago and Southland (Outhwaite 1938, p. 218; Baker 1967, pp. 436-48; Bathgate 1968, p. 206; see Barton 1980).

Planimetric Mapping of Eurasia: A.D. 1800-1900

Asia

although most of Asia had been visited before 1800, the interiors of central Asia, Indochina, and Arabia were almost complete blanks, and China and India, both of which had seen much activity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, still retained unknown regions.

The period from 1800 to 1850 saw pioneer journeys in almost every part of Asia. Little accurate work had been done in the Tigris and Euphrates lowlands until then. From 1800 to 1820 was the basic exploration in central Persia and western Afghanistan. The century was filled with the activities of the great Survey of India; in 1802 came the beginnings of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, extended to Kashmir by 1855 and joined to the Russian geodetic net in 1913. Areas in northern India and its borders - Sind, Kashmir, the frontiers of Nepal, and Sikkim - especially received attention, but Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepal remained blank in large areas. Japan's coastline had been thoroughly surveyed from 1800 to 1817 (Baker 1967, pp. 233, 245-46, 256, 265-72, 278).

While the Arabian peninsula had been known to the Greeks and Romans, it is nonetheless one of the last areas of the world to be discovered by Europeans; in fact it was not until 1819 that a European (a Captain Sadlier) reported crossing Arabia from the Gulf to the Red Sea (Leatherdale and Kennedy 1975, p. 240). Elsewhere in the East, Jacotin's 1818 map of Palestine, at a scale of 1:100,000, made during Napoleon's campaigns, has many inaccuracies (especially in its depiction of the Dead Sea coast), but it marks the first attempt at an instrument survey of Palestine (Hopkins 1968, p. 30). An 1835 map of Arabia, based on the inquiries of Ritter and Berghaus, gives positions fairly well, but showed no detailed knowledge of the area (Werdecker 1939, p. 91).

In Indochina there was some exploration and mapping, largely due to such occurrences as the 1824-1826 war. About 1836, British intercourse with Burma ceased, and an 1838 map by Captain Pemberton, although a great advance, left large tracts blank (east from Irrawady to the Shan states; the Yau country - west of the mouth of the Kyendwen to the interior of Doab between Irrawaddy and the Kyendwen from Moutshobu upwards; and the hill country east and northeast of the capital, toward the China frontier) (Yule 1857, pp. 56-57).

The years 1850 to 1900 were devoted to more specific explorations, such as the relatively accurate delineation of major features of Persia and Afghanistan, the mapping of French Indochina and Thailand, and heavy activity in central Asia. Activity was particularly intense after 1855. Some notable work, especially that of C.M. Doughty (1876-1878; see his Arabia Deserta), was done in Arabia in the second half of the century, but in the main large areas remained unexplored by Westerners. As for China, the Jesuit survey in the eighteenth century had resulted in a reasonably accurate map, and little additional work was done until after 1850, when much interior exploration was carried on by British subjects, especially in western China (in Szechuan and Yunnan). In the Middle East at least three different boundary commission expeditions were bustling about, filling in basic geographic information about places whose names stir the blood - e.g., Samarkand, the Kyber Pass (Baker 1967, p. 233, 248-53, 256-60, 273-77).

Van de Velde's 1858 map of Palestine at a scale of 1:315,000 was a giant step in the transition toward a survey of the area (Hopkins 1968, p. 30). Between 1860 and 1862 Mansell mapped the Mediterranean coastline of Palestine; the depiction of the areas south of Joppa had previously been questionable, The first surveys of Palestine took place in 1864, 1871-75, 1877, and 1884 (the latter two - primarily of the west - were directed by the Palestine Exploration Fund) (Hopkins 1968, pp. 30, 33; Baker 1967, pp. 244-45).

The exact shape of New Guinea was not determined until 1873, and its coastal feature were unknown until early in the century. At the same time, the exploration of the interior was undertaken, with the English and the Germans beginning work in the late 1880s and the Dutch in about 1893 (Baker 1967, p. 439).

The Malay peninsula, except for the isthmus of Kra (explored in 1839), remained mostly unknown until 1875 and after. Modern mapping of the area began about 1879, with an adequate map published by the Royal Asiatic Society (Mills 1937, p. 50). Elsewhere in the region, the larger portion of Java had been still unexplored even in 1858; by 1859 only the northwest coast of Borneo was known, a situation that underwent change for the better from the time of the establishment of Rajah Brooke in Sarawak (1841-1868). Between 1884 and 1890 a large area in north Sarawak was filled in. In 1882 the Java triangulation was completed, and in 1886 Dutch surveys in Borneo began. Primary triangulation of Japan began in 1882 (Baker 1967, pp. 278-79, 443-45).

Work in central Borneo and Celebes began in 1893; by 1899 the southern peninsula was mapped but that was all. New Guinea was certainly in no better state with only its coastline known, largely due to the prevalence of malaria in the interior. The first separate map of it, at a scale of 1:2,000,000 in 1897:

shows much resemblance to the map of Greenland today. There was simply nothing to compile.

(T.J. Ormeling 1949-1950, p. 269).

On the other hand, Korea's topography was fixed fairly definitely in 1899, by the Japanese (Pawlowski 1904, p. 225). At the end of the century there were still regions in western Asia, southern Arabia, China, Tibet, Laos, and the Pamirs, that were poorly known (Raveneau 1892, p. 176; Debenham 1960, pp. 237-38).

Europe

Only Albania still needed planimetric work (Nopsca 1916; Kiepert 1868).

Russia

The "hundred-sheet" map (actually 107 sheets) at a scale of 1:840,000 was worked on from 1801 to 1805, and was based on the same survey as was the series of provincial geographical maps - compiled locally in accordance with the administrative divisions of 1796 - that served as a source for the Russian atlas of 1800 issued by the Senate's Geography Department (Shibanov 1975, pp. 128-30). In 1812, Sanson was responsible for a 77-sheet Carte de la Russie Europeans, issued by the then French Minister of War, the duc de Feltre ("Neue Charten von Russland" 1812, p. 355).

Exploration was intensive during the first half of the nineteenth century - although even in 1825 central Asia was almost unexplored - and was a prelude to the "vigorous political activity" of the rest of the century (Sohn 1901, pp. 349-50; Baker 1967, p. 240). Politics caused the Russians to work south over the Tien Shan, the Pamirs and Mongolia while the British worked north over the Karakorams and the Tibetan Plateau - the "Great Game" that readers of Kipling remember. Progress around the fringes of central Asia was the rule about 1875, for in these mountainous, isolated areas Europeans were frequently unwelcome. In Mongolia there was very little work done until 1881, and not much of note until 1890. The first European penetration of northern Tibet occurred in 1876 to 1878 (Baker 1967, pp. 279-93).

The second half of the century was most fruitful in Siberia; the trans-Baikal area, the Stanovoi Mountains, the Sea of Okhotsk, Sakhalin, and the many large rivers - the Kolyma, Indigirka, Yenisei - all received attention. As a prelude to military and political activities, the Russians were busy in the Altai Mountains (1826), the Amu Darya and Syr Darya basins (about 1850) and the Caucasus (Baker 1967, pp. 238-42).

Exploration in Siberia was also carried on by foreigners. Richard Bush traveled in Siberia between 1865 and 1867, and issued a travel book with such chapter titles as, "Ho! for the Amoor," "Rafting Down the Anadyr," and "In Misery" (Bush 1871). On Nordenskiold's expeditions to the Yenisei in 1875 and 1876, he made a new map of that river's delta, "to the great joy of Russian geographers" (Mickwitz and Miekkavaara 1979, p. xv). On the Vega expedition of 1879 and 1880, Nordenskiold examined all of the northern coastline of Siberia and made numerous amendments to the existing map (Ibid.).

Planimetric Mapping of Latin America: A.D. 1800-1900

By 1800 only a small block of Mexico (northwest Sonora) was unexplored, although mapping of Mexico suffered from the lack of sufficient surveys and data (Cluerg 1933, p. 117; Debenham 1960, p. 238; Baker 1967, pp. 395-96). Much farther south, in 1801 Captain Feliz de Azarra had finished basic survey work in the Paraguay/Parana basins (Baker 1967, p. 232). In 1833 a separate map of Costa Rica, by Rafael Osejo, was published in San Jose (Pan American Institute of Geography and History. Centro 1953a, p. 289).

Between 1826 and 1830 King and Fitzroy mapped the coasts from Rio de la Plata to Chiloe (Baker 1967, p. 405). Between 1846 and 1858 Franz Wisner drew an eight-sheet map, at a scale of 1:355,000, of Paraguay, to be published in 1875 (Bernleithner 1971, p. 73).

By 1850 there remained only three large blank spaces in South America: the Amazon basin, El Gran Chaco, and Patagonia (Baker 1967, p. 406). The year marked "the opening of a new epoch in the history of Hispanic American cartography" (Platt 1933, p. 661), as between 1850 and 1860 came the systematic exploration and surveying of many areas, such as the mapping of the Bolivian plateau, the then Nueva Granada (Colombia), Peru, Paraguay, Surinam, and the reduction in size of the blank spaces in Amazonia, particularly the tracing in of the tributaries (Caro Molina 1954, pp. 54-62, 135; Outhwaite 1938, p. 218; Debenham 1960, p. 238; Castello Branco 1954, p. 80; Bubberman 1973, pp. 74-76; Decoud 1904, p. 49; Baker 1967, pp. 406-408).

An atlas of Peru by Mariano Paz Soldan appeared in 1865; Antonio Codazzi carried out hundreds of miles of route traverses and scores of astronomical observations in Colombia between 1849 and 1855 (Platt 1933, p. 661). Between 1870 and 1890 Gran Chaco and Patagonia were filled in en grosse on the map. Exploration of French and British Guiana occurred from 1877 to 1879 (Baker 1967, pp. 401-415).

The 1880s were especially fecund in cartographic matters. An 1882 map at a scale of 1:1,000,000 by Cateau von Rosevelt and van Landsberghe would be the official map of Suriname (with additions) into the 1960s. Atlases of Argentina and Chile were issued, and Argentina published provincial maps in 1889 (Platt 1933, p. 661; Wekker 1966, p. 196; Pan American Union 1903, p. 341).

Although during the nineteenth century little geographic exploration was done in Mexico (aside from some work by the Germans in central Mexico in mid-century), some attempt was made to describe the northwest between 1890 and 1898, but many areas remained unsurveyed. Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and British Honduras received some attention, but as a whole the area was undisturbed by the steps of the explorer (Baker 1967, pp. 396-97).

At the end of the century there were still relatively unknown areas, such as the mountainous region of British Honduras, small areas in Argentina just east of the Chilean border, small areas in Patagonia, the eastern Ecuadorian borders (with Peru and Colombia), a small area in the northeast of Brazil (east of the Mamore River, near the Bolivian border), and of course parts of Amazonia (Debenham 1960, p. 238; Sapper 1898, pp. 4-6; Adams 1907, p. 307). As the century closed in 1899, the first "reasonably serviceable map of all Surinam" was issued by W.L. Loth (Bubberman 1973, p. 79).

Planimetric Mapping of North America: A.D. 1800-1900

... it may truthfully be stated in a friendly spirit that the enthusiasm to publish maps [of Virginia] during this time [to 1840] far outran their accuracy.

(Roberts and Bloomer 1939, p. ix)

The first half of the century saw the successful completion of the outline of the north coast except for a small segment east of the Alaska-Canada border and the coasts of some of the islands of the Canadian archipelago. The interior of Canada was explored largely by men working for trading companies; these men, especially David Thompson (some of whose maps were still being used in the 1930s) were so active that by about 1850 the major features of the interior were mapped. In the United States most exploring activity took place west of the Rockies, and most of it in the first half of the century by furtraders and the military, the former extensive and the latter intensive in their efforts (Baker 1967, pp. 364-70, 375).

It was not until 1800 that the Spanish government made serious efforts to explore and settle California and the northwest coast, so that coast did not assume a relatively accurate shape until von Humboldt's map of it, 1803-1804, drawn using Mexican government data; it was the last word in the mapping of the coast for many years (Wagner 1937, p. 253).

Between 1800 and 1817, with shape and extent fairly well mapped, came the sketching in of broad physical features in the interior of the United States, much of such work chronicled cartographically by Aaron Arrowsmith, whose ability it was "to assess and make the best use of sketch maps and reports from travellers and explorers ..." (Gohm 1972, p. 61). His 1801 map shows nothing of the interior of Quebec, has the Arctic coast almost all done in dotted lines, but possesses a quite complete Pacific coastline (Peters 1936a, p. 7).

Voyages to the Arctic Polar regions were few and far between until the beginning of the nineteenth century, due to the distractions of war in Europe and the many former failures. By the beginning of the century at least the outlines of all areas except the Pole itself were known, and it was time to find out if there were indeed land or four giant rivers (as medieval and renaissance peoples believed) at the North Pole (Thoren 1969, p. 1).

The exploration of the American West began in about 1804, with Lewis and Clark, who explored the Missouri and Columbia River basins, fixing geographical positions by somewhat inaccurate astronomical observations in order to make their 1805 map (Friis 1954, p. 350; Goetzmann 1966, p. 5). In 1805, Juan Pedro Walker, an officer of the Mexican army, protrayed much of the West with fair accuracy (Wheat 1956, p. 7). Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, sent to search for the Mississippi headwaters in 1805-1806, made an excellent map in the latter year, showing from St. Louis toward Santa Fe, with many new features, especially in the Great Plains at the foot of the Rockies (Friis 1958, p. 193). The great Lewis and Clark maps were issued between 1810 and 1829; the 1810 map was the master map of the west. The 1814 map, copied throughout the civilized world, gave a fairly complete idea of the Missouri Valley, a first (Goetzmann 1966, p. 69; Hamilton 1934, pp. 639-60).

Alexander von Humboldt's 1811 map of New Spain served as a model for most European cartographers of the time (Wheat 1956, p. 7). Far to the north, David Thompson's map of the Northwest Territory, published in 1814, was the first map of the area made from an actual survey (Peters 1936a, p. 12). yet further north, as late as 1817 no atlas or map could give a definite Arctic coastline except for the Mackenzie delta area, nor could any show islands west of Baffin Bay. The sounds leading out of Baffin Bay were finally explored by Parry in 1819 and 1820 (Langton 1935, p. 5; Verner and Woodward 1972, p. 2; Skelton 1958, p. 135).

During the 1820s exploration went on in the area between new Mexico and the Columbia. By 1823, Greenland's coast was explored to 75 degrees N (baker 1967, pp. 379, 469). A map of 1824, Philu E. Judd's Map of Michigan with part of the adjoining states, put forth on paper the results of surveys that probably began about 1814 (Karpinski 1946, p. 518).

By 1832 most of the basic work in the southwest had been done, although it was scrappy and in some cases inaccurate; in that year the first accurate map of the source of the Mississippi River appeared (Goetzmann 1966, p. 77; Baker 1967, p. 381). The first thorough mapping of Iowa occurred when Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Watts Kearney carried on, in 1835, the first well-documented exploration and survey of the state; Lieutenant Albert M. Lea, a member of the exploring party, later compiled the information into a map and booklet (Diana J. Fox 1978, p. 79). In the U. S.'s future possession, Alaska, major coastal features were all known by 1837, and the Yukon was already serving as a road for exploring the interior by Russian fur traders (Baker 1967, p. 398). For the lower 48, David H. Burr's monumental Map of the United States, based on Jedediah Smith's travels, was a key map, issued in 1839 and copied for years after that (Wheat 1956, pp. 11-12). it was not until 1839 that the juncture of Asia and North America was placed correctly, for the north Pacific coast was one of the last to be explored and mapped (Breitfuss 1939, p. 99; Raisz 1948, p. 45).

As late as 1842, the best map of the southwest United States was still Humboldt's 1811 New Spain, copied from Miera y Pacheca's "somewhat fanciful" map of the Escalante Expedition (Goetzmann 1966, p. 77). In 1845, the only maps available of California were planimetric maps of relatively small areas along the coast, "distinguished chiefly by their inaccuracy" (Wing 1949, p. 204). Lieutenant John C. Fremont "contributed more than any other explorer of the 1840s to the accurate description and mapping of the broad physical features of the West"; between 1842 and 1846 he led five different expeditions (Friis 1958, p. 199). His maps of 1843 to 1846 were widely used; Michell's 1846 map and Tanner's 1846 map used both Fremont's and Wiles' work as sources, but neither of the cartographers had ever been in the country, so "the entire southwest remained to be accurately mapped" (Goetzmann 1966, p. 254).

By mid-century the ever-increasing number of settlers hunkering over campfires west of the Mississippi and the mountains had made a railroad imperative; in 1853 a railroad survey began. As a result of all the settlement, knowledge of the West would go from scrappy and inaccurate to reasonably complete in the second half of the century (Baker 1967, pp. 390-91).

To the mid-nineteenth century, large segments of the Arctic had been explored and mapped, and the general configuration of the north part of America was clear, although the north and northwest coasts of Greenland (let alone - and people usually did - the interior) were still unexplored, with Etah (the northern boundary of Eskimo settlements) marking the northern limits of geographical knowledge (Verner 1978b, p. 127; Baker 1967, p. 468; Koch 1940, p. 7).

From about 1850 to 1870, many Spanish expeditions cruised the Pacific coast from Mexico to Alaska, with one of their main objects to map the unknown portions of those coasts (Maure 1975, p. 76). In 1851 California, complete with county boundaries, appeared on a map by Benjamin Butler (Henry E. Huntington 1946, p. 8). By 1856 Canada's northern shores were roughly explored and mapped, although some island coasts were still undefined, but large tracts of the interior were blank (Lanton 1935, p. 5).

Between 1853 and 1855 the Pacific railroad surveys took place in the western United States, with (in the last volume of the report by Jefferson Davis) the 1:3,000,000-scale map, "Map of the territory of the United States from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean ...," by Lieutenant Gouverneur Kemble Warren, 26 years old at the time. This 1857 map was a standard for 20 years and a fitting culmination of U.S. Army topographical expeditions that had been taking place since 1820 (Goetzmann 1966, p. 314; Joerg 1951, pp. 274-75; Hamilton 1934, p. 661). Lieutenant Warren, an honest man, indicated many streams with dotted lines and left vast areas blank; "nothing better was done until the frontier had passed away" (Hamilton 1934, p. 661). In 1859 the first known map of the Grand Canyon was made, by Egloffstein (Seavey 1980a, p. 6).

The Army Topographical Engineers made surveys from 1852 to 1874 of Michigan and the Great Lakes area, and issued a 22-sheet atlas as a result (Karpinski 1946, p. 521). By about 1860, southern California had been mapped (Goetzmann 1966, p. 366).

In 1867 the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, which - even at three cents an acre - ranks as one of the biggest gambles ever made, considering that apart from the lower course of the Yukon the country was unknown. After its purchase - perhaps afraid of what it might find out - the United States showed a marked lack of interest in its new possession, not even sending a delegate to assert rights of possession until 1869 (Baker 1967, p. 398).

During the 1870s, civilians began to replace soldiers in the mapping of the West (Goetzmann 1966, p. 426). Meanwhile in Canada, the first large accurate survey was initiated in 1870 when the Dominion Land Survey commenced in west Canada, at a time when reliable topographic detail for British Columbia was still weak. The Yukon was worked on from 1887 to 1888, while the Rockies were explored from 1886 into the early twentieth century (Pearson 1974, p. 119; Peters 1936a, p. 13).

Fridtjof Nansen, in the made-to-order Fram, voyaged in Arctic waters from 1893 to 1896, to such effect that in 1897 he stated firmly that there was no land at the North Pole and no ice cap either; he had traveled to 86 degrees 12 minutes N, the closest anyone was to approach the Pole until the twentieth century (Thoren 1969, p. 1; Baker 1967, p. 476). Meanwhile the U.S. Geological Survey had begun operations in Alaska in 1895; in the following year, gold was discovered, which accelerated exploration and mapping considerably. The Kuskowim River area was explored and mapped in 1898 (Baker 1967, p. 400; Sargent 1912, p. 487; U.S. Geological Survey 1899).

Late in the century and extending into the following one (1898-1902), the islands of the Canadian archipelago were explored. And at last, in 1900, the northernmost point of Greenland - at 83 degrees 37 minutes N - was reached, by Robert Peary, and Greenland at last was circumnavigated (Baker 1967, pp. 468-69).