Hmmmmmm.  That's kind of amazing.  Is that what is going on here?  New 
maps?

-jc

On Jan 18, 2005, at 7:43 AM, Gabriel Orgrease wrote:

> ...he had to get started on another trek into the countryside to survey
> the population and economy, and the geography as well. He unrolled the
> official maps of the country [British colonial Nigeria] which he was to
> survey, an area fairly new to him, and found that although they were 
> all
> "white, clean & new," they were completely useless:
>
> "Towns abandoned for years are entered in large letters, generally by
> the wrong names — the towns that do exist aren't there — magnificent
> roads on the map are mere jungle in reality, and new important highways
> have been left out. Mountains are just put in with the eyes shut. I
> shall have to start mapping at once, as I have to send in maps with my
> reports."
>
> (23 October 1918).
>
> During his last tour he might have despaired over the useless maps and
> cursed the men who made them and the government which issued them, but
> now he treated the whole affair as a joke as he saw its ridiculous
> aspects. Apparently the "wrong names" that he mentions were the same
> sort of mistake he used in his novel /Castle Corner/, when Cock Jarvis
> is mapping in Nigeria. They were the fault of the language barrier, for
> the natives who were questioned about the names of their towns and
> rivers and mountains simply didn't know what was going on. So onto the
> official maps of Nigeria went What Did He Say? River and the town of I
> Don't Know. In early November Joyce set out to draw up his own maps.
>
> Joyce Cary, a Biography, by Malcolm Foster, p 178-179
>
> --
> To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
> uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
> <http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>
>

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>