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The first person to map Scotland from a Scottish point of view was Timothy Pont, who worked between 1596 and 1614. Although coverage of Scotland was incomplete and some of his work has been lost, it formed the basis of Blaeu’s Atlas, published in 1654. Pont was a graduate of St Andrews and a Lowlander and so had Gaelic-speaking assistants for at least some of his work in the Gàidhealtachd. It is thought that the motivation for his task, like The Statutes of Iona, was part of the government policy of bringing the Highlands under more effective central control. With this in mind, the maps aimed to document how geography and society contributed to regional identities. Accompanying notes assessed the resources and productivity of the landscape. The focus was on how the rural economy of Scotland was organised. There was an emphasis on farms, mills, churches, bridges and roads, but much less notice was taken of natural features. Nevertheless, watercourses are often used as organising features around which information on the mapped landscape could be positioned.