ly for the immediate picturesque, and it was to justify
this name that I broke into the gallery of Mr. Poe and stole Flint's
pointer. And in the same way, it was because I had made two harbours
that the 'Hispaniola' was sent on her wanderings with Israel Hands. The
time came when it was decided to republish, and I sent in my manuscript,
and the map along with it, to Messrs. Cassell. The proofs came, they
were corrected, but I heard nothing of the map. I wrote and asked; was
told it had never been received, and sat aghast. It is one thing to draw
a map at random, set a scale in one corner of it at a venture, and write
up a story to the measurements. It is quite another to have to examine a
whole book, make an inventory of all the allusions contained in it, and
with a pair of compasses, painfully design a 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 Antiquary.' With the almanack at hand, he will scarce allow