83 - A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is a satire of contemporary England dressed up as a faux traveller’s tale by Jonathan Swift, narrating in the first person the voyages of one Lemuel Gulliver. The book, divided in four parts, tells of Gulliver’s shipwreck on Lilliput (which is inhabited by people no more than 15 cm tall), abandonment in Brobdingnag (where giants of 22 metres tall live), rescue by the flying island of Laputa, trip to Balnibarbi (where science is pursued without practical ends) and finally his voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms.
These Houyhnhnms are horses that rule over Yahoos, who are deformed, debased humans. Gulliver sides with the horses, comes to despise the humans, but in the end is expelled. Upon his return to England, Gulliver can no longer stand the company of ‘Yahoos’, and becomes a recluse, preferring the company of his horses.
The island of the Houyhnhnms is apparently situated close to the recently explored continent of Australia (or ‘New Holland’, as it was then known), evidenced by the many Dutch names on the mainland visible on this map, e.g. Nuyts Land, Maelsuyker Island, De Wits Island.
This map found on this page at the British Library.
I wish you had some contact info on your blog so we can send you stuff like this:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A449481
Comment by Andy — February 26, 2007 @
Wow! I am reading this book right now and was just wondering yesterday if you had any of the maps of these places. Quite a coincidence.
Comment by Alan — February 26, 2007 @
@ Andy:
Thanks for the link; I’ve got an e-mail address tucked away somewhere in the comments on one of the first (if not the very first) post.
@ Alan:
Happy to oblige - and even happier to do so serendipitously!
Comment by strangemaps — February 26, 2007 @
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Pingback by Country Office » 83 - A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms — February 26, 2007 @
Gorgeous–how did I miss this?!
Comment by defrostindoors — March 5, 2007 @
oz97uh kak dumaesh, pomozhet?
Comment by profi — July 5, 2007 @
Great to see this map again! If anyone is interested in reading a bit more about one small island marked on the right hand side, have a look at the book Sweers Islands Unveiled or check the website http://www.sweers.com.au and I believe that the modern term “Yahoo” came from Swift’s book, along with many other now-common words.
Comment by Lyn — July 19, 2007 @
To follow up on Lyn’s comment (July 19th 2007), we had the great pleasure to include the above map in the small booklet “Sweers Islands Unveiled” (48 pages), where we traced the nomenclatures of Abel Tasman and Matthew Flinders with a particular look at the name Salomon Sweers, onetime owner of two of the remaining copies of Tasman’s journals of the “Heemskerck” from his 1642-43 circumnavigation of Australia. Salomon Sweers (1612-74) was an Extra-Ordinary Councillor of India at the Dutch East India Company’s (VOC) office in Batavia, and it was thrilling to find his name included in Swift’s map. Out of originally five rivers, islands etc named after him in or near Australia, only one “Sweers Island” remain, in the Gulf of Carpentaria east of Mornington Island.
Comment by Carsten Berg Høgenhoff — April 10, 2008 @