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The Island of Lost Maps
A True Story of Cartographic Crime
by Miles Harvey
Guy Babineau

Gerardus Mercator was a 16th century Flemish 
mathematician who made the first map featuring the 
checkerboard of latitude and longitude, although its 
proportions are way out of whack; Greenland looks almost 
as big as China which is four times larger, for example. We 
still use it today.

It’s no small coincidence that Mercator translated into 
English means “merchant”.  The European explorers of 
Mercator’s or any other time, often mythologized as brave, 
adventurous visionaries whose end motive was to expand 
human knowledge of the universe, were really in the game 
to make a buck, a reputation, or both. Christopher 
Columbus wasn’t trying to prove that the world was round. 
Educated Europeans since the ancient Greeks knew that. He 
wanted to find a fast-track to the spices and stimulants of 
the Orient, for gold and glory. Mounting evidence indicates 
that Marco Polo likely never made it all the way to China 
but stitched together his trip from fragments of information 
he stole from strangers. Why? Gold and glory.

Greed and lies heaped upon vague half-truths inform the 
way we look at the world, further impressed upon us by the 
prejudicial contours of Mercator’s map. Speaking of greed 
and lies, enter Gilbert Bland. Bland is a slippery scam artist 
and the intriguing if elusive centrepiece of Miles Harvey’s 
fascinating, imaginative first book, The Island of Lost 
Maps. For many years the itinerant Bland zigzagged across 
the States, even making it up to Vancouver and Victoria, 
and, X-acto knife in hand, slunk into libraries housing 
important and valuable maps, excised them then sold them 
to map freaks, er, collectors.

Harvey, a Chicago journalist who writes for  In These 
Times and Outside, is a self-professed map lover. He 
became preoccupied by the picaresque Bland after reading 
about the thief’s arrest at Baltimore’s renowned Peabody 
Library. What begins as a reliable and well-written piece of 
investigative journalism, Harvey in pursuit of Bland, 
quickly evolves into a thoughtful and informative journey 
into the topsy-turvy world of eccentrically intellectual map 
collectors, brusque and narcissistic map brokers, dimestore 
hoodlums and displaced lives. Along the way, Harvey gives 
us a comprehensive tour of the history, mechanics and 
philosophy of cartography. It’s a trip worth taking.

Originally published in The Georgia Straight

© Guy Babineau 2003-2004

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Originally published in the National Post

© Guy Babineau 2003-2004

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