Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Britain and Ireland. In shape they were widely dierent, but as to size there was no
scale by which to measure them. From the great number of subdivisions, and from
signs, which apparently represented towns and cities, I was allowed to infer, that
the country was at least as extensive as the British isles. This map was apparently
unnished, for it had no names inscribed upon it.
I have just said, my geographical knowledge was imperfect. Though I had not
enough to draw the outlines of any country by memory, I had still sucient to
recognize what I had before seen, and to discover that none of the larger islands
in our globe resembled the one before me. Having such and so strong motives to
curiosity, you may easily imagine my sensations on surveying this map. Suspecting,
as I did, that many of Ludlow’s intimations alluded to a country well known to him,
though unknown to others, I was, of course, inclined to suppose that this country
was now before me.
In search of some clue to this mystery, I carefully inspected the other maps in
this collection. In a map of the eastern hemisphere I soon observed the outlines of
islands, which, though on a scale greatly diminished, were plainly similar to that of
the land above described.
It is well known that the people of Europe are strangers to very nearly one half
of the surface of the globe. [*] From the south pole up to the equator, it is only
the small space occupied by southern Africa and by South America with which we
are acquainted. There is a vast extent, sucient to receive a continent as large as
North America, which our ignorance has lled only with water. In Ludlow’s maps
nothing was still to be seen, in these regions, but water, except in that spot where
the transverse parallels of the southern tropic and the 150th degree east longitude
intersect each other. On this spot were Ludlow’s islands placed, though without
any name or inscription whatever.
I needed not to be told that this spot had never been explored by any European
voyager, who had published his adventures. What authority had Ludlow for xing
a habitable land in this spot? and why did he give us nothing but the courses of
shores and rivers, and the scite of towns and villages, without a name?
As soon as Ludlow had set out upon his proposed journey of a fortnight,
I unlocked his closet, and continued rummaging among these books and maps
till night. By that time I had turned over every book and almost every leaf in this
small collection, and did not open the closet again till near the end of that period.
Meanwhile I had many reections upon this remarkable circumstance. Could
Ludlow have intended that I should see this atlas? It was the only book that could
be styled a manuscript on these shelves, and it was placed beneath several others,
in a situation far from being obvious and forward to the eye or the hand. Was it
an oversight in him to leave it in my way, or could he have intended to lead my
curiosity and knowledge a little farther onward by this accidental disclosure? In
either case how was I to regulate my future deportment toward him? Was I to
speak and act as if this atlas had escaped my attention or not? I had already, after
my rst examination of it, placed the volume exactly where I found it. On every
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