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map to suit the data. I did it; and the map was drawn again in my
father's office, with embellishments of blowing whales and sailing
ships, and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of
various writing, and elaborately FORGED the signature of Captain
Flint, and the sailing directions of Billy Bones. But somehow it
was never Treasure Island to me.
I have said the map was the most of the plot. I might almost say
it was the whole. A few reminiscences of Poe, Defoe, and
Washington Irving, a copy of Johnson's Buccaneers, the name of the
Dead Man's Chest from Kingsley's At Last, some recollections of
canoeing on the high seas, and the map itself, with its infinite,
eloquent suggestion, made up the whole of my materials. It is,
perhaps, not often that a map figures so largely in a tale, yet it
is always important. The author must know his countryside, whether
real or imaginary, like his hand; the distances, the points of the
compass, the place of the sun's rising, the behaviour of the moon,
should all be beyond cavil. And how troublesome the moon is! I
have come to grief over the moon in Prince Otto, and so soon as
that was pointed out to me, adopted a precaution which I recommend
to other men--I never write now without an almanack. With an
almanack, and the map of the country, and the plan of every house,
either actually plotted on paper or already and immediately
apprehended in the mind, a man may hope to avoid some of the
grossest possible blunders. With the map before him, he will
scarce allow the sun to set in the east, as it does in The
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