Thursday, November 5, 2020

Maps, Again

 Having read The Invasion by Janet Lewis, I wished to get a clearer idea of some of the geography. Most of the action of the book takes place within a few miles of the Sault Ste.-Marie, and for that there is a detailed map in the end papers. Yet there are important chapters set around the western end of Lake Superior, around Chegoimegon and La Pointe, and for that there is no map.

I looked for such a map in the two volumes of the Library of America edition of Parkman's France and England in the New World, thinking that I recalled detailed maps of Lake Superior in them.  This is not quite so. Most of the maps show country farther east. The map marked "Countries Traversed by Marquette, Hennepin, and La Salle" following page 909 in La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, does show the west end of Lake Superior; but it also shows the northeastern tip of Cuba, so the details are sparse. With a magnifying glass, or perhaps just young eyes, one can see there "St. Esprit", the name of the mission at La Pointe.

 The household Rand-McNally road atlas is more satisfactory, showing one Chequamegon Point and Bay in Wisconsin, a little west of the Michigan line, and facing them the island of La Pointe. Of course the US Geological Survey has topological maps of the area, but unfortunately it splits the details among several. On the whole Google Maps might serve one best.


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