In the early eighteenth century cartographers of Acadia and the Atlantic region focussed on fishing banks and coastal features in order to guide explorers, military expeditions, and fishing boats. Early descriptions of inland areas were at best uninformative and at worst misleading. Leaving empty spaces on maps was unpopular, and therefore inland topographical features such as mountain chains were mostly imagined (MacNutt).
However, maps dating from the eighteenth century have still been useful for studies of landscape change, mainly because such great attention was paid to coastal features. Environmental scientists Keryn Bromberg and Mark Bertness used historical maps of New England to establish the area of marshland in 1777 and to track losses due to sea level rise, watercourse alteration, agricultural expansion, urban growth and other changes in land use (Bromberg and Bertness). Historians of PEI have also begun to study changes in the Island’s ecosystems and physical landscape. Matthew Hatvany examined the relationship between agricultural communities and salt marshes in PEI and the Atlantic region. Doug Sobey used historical maps and qualitative sources in his Early Descriptions of the Forests of Prince Edward Island (2002), and he and William Glen have collaborated on several projects that address forest and agricultural land use in Island history (2004).
In the early days of the English period a different cosmology was expressed in the cartouche and other images on maps of the Maritime region. From Thomas Kitchin’s engraving of colonists engaged in sailing, fishing, and clearing the coastal zone in his 1749 map
[ Figure 1 – placeholder ]
to the stylized sketches of progressive farms and businesses in Meacham’s Illustrated Atlas of PEI, the images that accompanied maps depicted human transformations of the landscape. This was an Island that could sustain life and settlement as well as accommodate the notions of progress that people associated with the British Empire and its Industrial Revolution. Maps in the English period focussed on useful features such as towns, mines and agricultural settlements along the coast. The coastal features of early Island maps were often functional, such as sounding measurements and nautical descriptions of bays and rivers; by the late eighteenth century the function of maps was less about cosmology, art, and imperial exploration and conquest, and more about individual manipulation of resources. To Europeans, this process would require the orderly occupation of lands, a detailed knowledge of natural resources, and the displacement of any indigenous populations that were seen as a threat.
[ Figure 1: Inset from Thomas Kitchin’s 1749 Map of Nova Scotia ]
The forests and other interior lands that were once displayed as blank spaces or imagined topographies became just as important as the ocean for cartographers. The coast lines of Prince Edward Island, like most of the subarctic world, were measured and mapped extensively in the nineteenth century, and the cartographer’s focus shifted from coastal and off-shore resources to the lines of the land.**
** 1 Even the orientation of PEI maps became the familiar NNW angle that maximized the land that could be displayed on a rectangular grid.