THE ROYAL ATLAS.*
An atlas is,for ordinary men, as much a necessity to-day as a dictionary was a century ago. Middle-class men and women have learned to spell, but they have not learned geography except in a limited degree. The helplessness of an ordinary Englishman when talked to about the boundaries of the Principalities, or the mouths of the Danube, or the danger of allowing the Herzegovine to become Servian, or the importance of Seleucia, or the French successes in Anam, or any question whatever connected with the South American republics, is enough to excite pity in a schoolmaster. Their teachers are not always much better. In " Chambers's Educational Course" there is a geography. which is full of the most extraordinary blunders. Among the principal cities of India, for example, are Jumnoo, a little hill fort, and Golconda, which is a forgotten province. As well might a geographer declare Landguard Fort and Cornwall the principal cities of Great Britain. As for women, they gene- rally know as much of geography as they do of astronomy. They can tell the names of the " chief towns" of most countries, as they can those of the planets, but as to the route from one to another, or the line of a great river, or any comparative idea of area, they have no more notion than they have of the weight of the next planet Leverrier means to discover. They learn such things from governesses and schoolmistresses, who teach them what they call the " use of the globes"—a wonderful science, which, as private people have discarded globes, and schoolgirls can only find places on them by remembering their " bearings" towards the frame, does not per- haps leave the most definite of impressions. The comparative area, in- deed, of different countries is a point upon which even well-informed people are hopelessly at sea. At a prize exhibition in a large school, the other day, the pupils who could give the latitude and longitude of the Cape, its exact distance from the equinoctial line, and all manner of useless information, could not give the faintest idea of the size of the Cape colony. One thought it as large as Middlesex, while another, of more expanded notions, suggested Ireland as the fitter comparison, and all were utterly confounded when told that it was as large as two Englands. We have heard editors declare Hungary to be equal to three Englands, and not one educated man in sixty has a notion that Arabia is a hundred thousand square miles larger than Europe within the Vistula. Part of this ignorance arises from our mode of teaching, and part from the reluctance, when a geographical question comes up, to study an atlas for five minutes.
They are not very inviting, to be sure. The objections we recently raised to some modern maps apply in an equal degree to most modern atlases. They are, many of them, especially when very cheap, trade tricks. Very few are dated, still fewer are drawn up with any degree of scientific discernment, and fewest of all reasonably clear. The compilers seem to think that if they crowd in as many names as the paper will hold, rule the degrees accurately, and give great rivers a fluttering outline, something between the tail of a comet and an angel's sword in an ecclesiastical picture, they have done all that can be expected of them. If they add an index of the names, which any clerk could prepare by dint of expenditure of time, they style the atlas " magnificent," and charge for it a price which would buy a first-class volume of engravings. Of the cheap atlases we must not, of course, expect much, or we might protest against atlases with four sheets per country all in one colour, and so printed that the eye is be- wildered in the effort to follow a degree ; against atlases in which cities and villages—"New York," and " Tompkinsville, Va."—are printed in the same type; against atlases with an immense map of the Holy Land, and none of Ireland ; and against atlases, above all, in which the degrees are fined down in some extraordinary way, which makes Australia look rather smaller than Sicily, and fines New Caledonia to a speck, while leaving Iceland a broad patch. We have one on our table at this minute, in which every place of importance in India is put on the wrong bank of the river on which it is built, though in the right latitude and longitude. Obviously the rivers have been traced in after the cities, the quaint zigzag, which means a river on a map, being drawn wherever it would most conveniently go. This is, of course, an exceptional case ; but it is not a bit worse than the really common offence of drawing island boundaries without the smallest reference to any known geographical facts, till Chusan, for instance, looks as if it were completely surrounded with land- locked harbours, after the model of Port Jackson. The very best atlas, all things considered, now in circulation is " Stieler's Hand Atlas," printed at Gotha, and revised by Augustus Petermann. It is a marvel of clear printing and cheap- ness, and in a constant use of two years we have not detected a blunder. It is, however, printed with the name of each place as its inhabitants use it, and all other words in German, and is, there- fore, not acceptable to the majority of Englishmen. For them the
• 251e Royal Atlas. By Keith Johnston. Blackwood and Son. best is, we believe, the new edition of 'Keith Johnston's Royal Alias, a really beautiful specimen of map-making. This edition, which is but a shade smaller than the last, contains some improve- ments of very material importance. The first is an exhaustive index. to each map, in place of the cumbrous general index usually printed. This arrangement admits of much greater minuteness, with much less exertion to the inquirer; who is usually quite well aware of the country in which the place he is seeking is to be found. One of the very great nuisances in all atlases, moreover, is corrected, viz. the necessity of opening each page to find the number of the map. It is now printed on the blank back as well as on the face of the map. A still further improvement would be the name of the country under the number, which would rid us of the index, but the number is still almost as great a convenience as the paging of a book. It is difficult to dis- cover why it was ever omitted. The boundaries, though a little faint, are perceptible, and in some maps, as in the two of Hindostan, extra- ordinary labour has been expended on them. The boundaries of the counties as well as of provinces are accurately given, we presume, from the topographical survey, and as Indians always talk of coun- ties, and not a provinces, the reader finds himself able to ascertain the localities he formerly only guessed. A little more vulgarity in the way of emphatic colouring would, however, have been advisable,
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as, for instance, in Central India, in which " Scindia's dominions' form a wholly unintelligible entity. Why should not Indian or Austrian divisions be coloured like districts in the Cape colony or French departments. It would be difficult to suggest a map more nearly perfect than that of. France, in which boundaries, railways, and mountain chains are as clear as in a picture, though the rivers would bear deeper or more vividly coloured tracing. A river is not,as most editors of maps persist in thinking, merely a cleft in the soil so many yards broad, but incomparably the most important feature in the district which it drains. The two maps of America are equally creditable, and far superior to any of the half-dozen we noticed the other day. The railway system round Washington has been drawn as carefully as the mountain chains, though there is a deficiency of names. Any one, for instance, who knows where the Manassas Rail- way is, can see on this map, at a glance, why that little line should be all-important. to the contending. sections, but then the map gives him no clue to its locality. The index might tell us, if there lk no space for the word, but, as far as an observer can detect, there is space. Will Mr. Keith Johnston pardon us for suggesting three additions which might be advantageously made to his next map : a separate map of Russia in Asia with the districts on its southern boundiry„ the materials for which must be getting pretty ample ; a map of Southern Asia between the Bay of Bengal and China, showing Burmah, Siam, the new French possessions in Cochin China, and part of the Archipelago, a great territory not covered by his present series; and a list, either printed on each map or appended to the indexes, of areas calculated in British square miles. A few pages of strictly geographical statistics added to the preface would immensely increase the value of the best atlas yet given to the public.
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