Remrkable River "Map"

This “map” should absolutely not be used for navigation. More of an illustrative graphic than a true map, it is geographically accurate in many ways while placing rivers that are continents away as neighbors.

-via David Rumsey Map Collection

Titled “A Map of the Principal Rivers Shewing Their Courses, Countries, and Comparative Lengths“, it was created in 1834 in England by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Rivers radiate around a circle based on their orientation of flow. That is how you get Italy’s Po River situated between China’s Yangtze and the Amazon in South America - all east-flowing rivers.

The amazing trick of this map is how the authors were able to fit river courses into each other with minimal distortion of directions or lengths. Here you can see how the Amur River flows over the top of the Great Lakes with the entire area nestled into the Amazon’s curving headwater tributaries.

Some sacrifices had to be made here such as cutting off the major south flowing tributaries of the Amazon but I love the way they folded Brazil and Peru around Mongolia.

There is a cliche (at least here in North America) that few rivers flow northwards. This map shows that many of the world’s longest rivers including the Nile, Lena and Yenisei (Ienisei on here) flow north.

At the top of the map is a legend. The word “character” is confusing here but I think it just refers to the different line symbols (dots, dashes, etc) used to distinguish the river by their continents.

At the bottom is a chart “shewing” the length of each river and some text stating that the concentric circles at 200 mile increments are to give a general idea of the distance to the sea.

Not just impressive in its scope, the map also highlights some beautiful details with hatch lines for topography, parallel lines implying water depth, shading and a very restrained bit of blue shading for water bodies.

Browse this map here.