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.
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