The maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were, by any modern (0) YARDSTICK, riddled with inaccuracies. Coastlines were approximated, interiors filled with conjecture, and the occasional sea monster the margins where reliable information ran out. Yet to dismiss these documents as merely would be to miss what made them so remarkable. Cartographers of the period operated at the of science and speculation, combining navigational data with the accounts of sailors whose reliability was, to put it politely, variable. The resulting maps are best understood less as attempts to the world faithfully than as hybrid objects — part reference tool, part work of art, part political statement. A well-placed royal could redirect a border or flatter a patron; a decorative flourish could the gaze away from awkward gaps in knowledge. Modern viewers, accustomed to the cold precision of satellite imagery, sometimes to appreciate the craft involved. What these early cartographers achieved, with limited instruments and limitless uncertainty, remains a to the power of informed imagination.