More nice maps

Further to "A Buyers Guide to Maps of Antarctica", just a quick link (I'm quite busy helping set up the infrastructure for a music project): Cartophilia: Maps and Map Memorabilia. I particularly like the subcategory Maps as Art.

Stamps, postcards, advertising, coffee mugs, shirts, and other ephemera. I love maps, and maps as an element of design.

"I think that the constant study of maps is apt to disturb men's reasoning powers" -- Lord Salisbury

As explained in the post Empire: Striding Across Africa, Lord Salisbury was referring to the general British obsession at the time for gaining territory even if it made no strategic sense. He added:

Certainly the enthusiasm which has been evoked for this desolate corner of Africa has surprised me more than anything else in this controversy. We have had a fierce conflict over the possession of a lake whose name I am afraid I cannot pronounce correctly—I think it is Lake Ngami—our only difficulty being that we do not know where it is. We cannot determine its position within 100 miles, certainly not within 60 miles, and there are great doubts whether it is a lake at all, or only a bed of rushes.
- Hansard, 10 July 1890

- Ray