Read Online Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizatio by David Standish - Free Book Online
Authors: David Standish
Ads: Link
according to this scheme proved impossible, so Mercator drew another map of the Arctic, from a point of view in outer space above the planet. He combined several traditional elements—including an open polar sea—primarily drawing on a fourteenth-century text, now lost, called The Travels of Jacobus Cnoyen of Bois le Duc. It contained a summary account of travels to the north by an English friar who had gone there for King Edward III and written a book about it, Inventio Fortunatae , also now lost. But Mercator read Cnoyen’s book, and wrote a long letter about it to John Dee, Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, in which he says the friar, using “magical arts,” claimed to have seen this utmost northerly place in 1360. The friar said that four arms of the sea rushed as torrential rivers between Arctic landmasses to form an ocean at the top of the world. These rivers crashed together at the pole, forming a terrible maelstrom that plunged into an abyss, the foaming water sucked down into the center of the earth. And so Mercator drew it in his polar map. Mercator places as his centerpiece at the pole a dark craggy rock—the legendary Rupes Nigra or Black Precipice, the lodestone mountain toward which all compasses presumably pointed. 12 The projection suggests a broken donut, with an inner sea as the hole and plenty of ocean space for navigation between the four northern landmasses and the known continents to the south. Thus his map of polar regions inadvertently served as an advertising poster for the open polar sea and a shortcut to Asia—and one that Symmes certainly knew.
Symmes insisted on this open sea for his own purposes, of course. It was additional “proof” of his polar openings and the idyllic interior that beckoned. But Symmes’ polar dreams were in the mainstream zeitgeist. True, he took his polar fascination one toke over the line, but it was going around. A polar mania in the form of voyages of exploration, both north and south, reasserted itself after 1815 and was going full tilt when Symmes offered his theory to the world and himself as the leader of an arctic expedition. Symmes and his polar holes influenced thinking about the hollow earth from then on. After Symmes, ideas about the hollow earth, in real life and in fiction, become inextricably linked with the poles and polar exploration, right down to the present.
Finding a shortcut to Asia from Europe through a Northwest Passage had initially appealed to the English because the known routes to the Orient—around Africa and South America—had been monopolized by the Spanish and Portuguese. Over time the monopoly crumbled, but dreams of finding the passage lived on. The pursuit of it took on a certain frenzy during Symmes’ lifetime and must have contributed to his polar visions. Many of the polar “authorities” Symmes invokes in support of his theory were involved in seeking this icy grail.
Polar projection from Gerardus Mercator’s revolutionary world map. (Collection of The Map House of London)
The archipelago lying above the North American continent proved both tantalizing and maddening to these explorers. Around every cape might lie an open sea and a straight shot to Asia—or more bays that finally gave way to a shoreline, more large islands to navigate around, or a wall of ice. But great rewards lay at the end of the labyrinth if it could be found. The names of those who tried and failed ornament the map of northern Canada, a cartographical necropolis of brave futility. They include John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Henry Hudson, and James Baffin.
Samuel Hearne, a Hudson’s Bay Company employee who made several heroic treks through the Canadian north between 1769 and 1772, became the first European to walk overland from Hudson’s Bay to the Arctic Ocean—and back!—thereby establishing that there was no sea passage through continental North America. His 1795 account of his adventures, Journey from Prince of Wales Fort in
Symmes insisted on this open sea for his own purposes, of course. It was additional “proof” of his polar openings and the idyllic interior that beckoned. But Symmes’ polar dreams were in the mainstream zeitgeist. True, he took his polar fascination one toke over the line, but it was going around. A polar mania in the form of voyages of exploration, both north and south, reasserted itself after 1815 and was going full tilt when Symmes offered his theory to the world and himself as the leader of an arctic expedition. Symmes and his polar holes influenced thinking about the hollow earth from then on. After Symmes, ideas about the hollow earth, in real life and in fiction, become inextricably linked with the poles and polar exploration, right down to the present.
Finding a shortcut to Asia from Europe through a Northwest Passage had initially appealed to the English because the known routes to the Orient—around Africa and South America—had been monopolized by the Spanish and Portuguese. Over time the monopoly crumbled, but dreams of finding the passage lived on. The pursuit of it took on a certain frenzy during Symmes’ lifetime and must have contributed to his polar visions. Many of the polar “authorities” Symmes invokes in support of his theory were involved in seeking this icy grail.
Polar projection from Gerardus Mercator’s revolutionary world map. (Collection of The Map House of London)
The archipelago lying above the North American continent proved both tantalizing and maddening to these explorers. Around every cape might lie an open sea and a straight shot to Asia—or more bays that finally gave way to a shoreline, more large islands to navigate around, or a wall of ice. But great rewards lay at the end of the labyrinth if it could be found. The names of those who tried and failed ornament the map of northern Canada, a cartographical necropolis of brave futility. They include John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Henry Hudson, and James Baffin.
Samuel Hearne, a Hudson’s Bay Company employee who made several heroic treks through the Canadian north between 1769 and 1772, became the first European to walk overland from Hudson’s Bay to the Arctic Ocean—and back!—thereby establishing that there was no sea passage through continental North America. His 1795 account of his adventures, Journey from Prince of Wales Fort in
Similar Books
