The Phantom Atlas

February 5, 2018
This collection of cartographic errors from maps throughout history provides an entertaining glimpse into the spread of misinformation during the age of exploration. Brooke-Hitching (Fox Tossing) arranges his subjects alphabetically and begins with the “Strait of Anian,” a misconceived western terminus to the Northwest Passage from the 14th century, and ends with the “Zeno Map,” based on an unsubstantiated exploration of the North Atlantic by the Zeno brothers in the 15th century. Reproductions of mistaken maps accompany each entry, along with theories of the errors’ possible origins and accounts of their final erasures from the annals of geography. Some entries are for places that exist, but at one point were improperly described, as with a California that appears as its own island on hundreds of maps from the 17th and 18th centuries, a mistake that the author tracks back to the 1602 voyage of Sebastian Vizcaíno. Though much of the book covers familiar ground in documenting accounts of nonexistent lands such as Atlantis, El Dorado, Hy Brasil, and Thule, a section on the fantastic creatures, including the Sea Pig and the Hippocentaur, that appear in the marginalia of many maps sets this atlas apart from the mass of other books on the subject. Cartophiles will find much to amuse themselves. Color illus.