Mapping Travel: The Origins and Conventions of Western Journey Maps

More often than not, readers of travel narratives can expect to find at least one map—if not several—showing, as English privateer William Dampier wrote, “the Course of the Voyage,” that is, where the author—traveler went and, implicitly, a sense of what was seen and experienced. Dampier used a now—common cartographic strategy to tell the story from beginning to end as well as around significant places on the way by marking the journey with a ‘pricked’ line. Despite the lines’ popularity an...