Our Man in the Orient
The Enduring Myth of Prester John
Nate Barksdale
January 1, 2003
The first world map to include the Western Hemisphere was drawn in 1507 by an Alsatian cartographer named Martin Waldseemüller. Its initial printing ran a thousand copies, of which only one complete version—purchased recently by the Library of Congress for $10 million—is known to exist. Even in the tantalizingly low-resolution copies available on the Internet, Waldseemüller's map is a thing of beauty, brilliantly illustrated and full of written descriptions and details about seas and cities and rivers. Nestled in the scrollwork and filigree at the top edge of the map are portraits of two men: on the left, there's Ptolemy, the great Greek geographer, presiding over an inset map of the Old World. And on the right, an Italian upstart—not Christopher Columbus but Amerigo Vespucci—gazes toward the great South Sea, where floats the continent that for the first time bears his name: America, distorted by Waldseemüller's haphazard projection into the shape of an enormous chicken tender. Due south of Amerigo's visionary face, amidst rivers and lakes in the general vicinity of Tibet, the careful reader of Latin may find words to the following effect: "This is the land of the good king and lord, known as Prester John, lord of all Eastern and Southern India, lord of all the kings of India, in whose mountains are found all kinds of precious stones." The spot is marked, not by the expected X, but with the sign of the cross. Prester John was not, despite what you might think from the name, a circus performer nor the founder of a chain of fried-food restaurants. Nor was he a magician, though he did have the trick of vanishing only to reappear in unexpected places. And if his name, once you say it a few times, seems ...
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