The Incompetent Cartographer by Adam Acidophilus

There was once an incompetent cartographer who produced the most unreliable maps, for he was ignorant, headstrong, unwilling to learn, and didn't know a blind thing about cartography.

He had no time for the accepted practise of surveying by the plotting of triangles, preferring instead his "own secret method," which was unreliable and inconsistent, and accomplished by throwing potatoes, and resulted in the omission of many acres of land from his maps, and the addition elsewhere of land that did not exist.

He frowned upon the use of a compass, or "Lucifer's fangled technology," as he called it, preferring instead to use his moistened index finger to find north – which is impossible.

And he rejected conventional forms of notation – marking rivers with solid red lines, lakes as black squares and the sea as an area of deciduous woodland – because, as he so persuasively put it, "I have no blue ink."

Despite these shortcomings the incompetent cartographer refused to accept that his maps were no good.

"These are the best maps ever," he would insist. "All my life I have struggled to make good maps," he would add. "If anybody makes any derogatory remarks about my maps I shall have a nervous breakdown," he would go on, "and then they'll be sorry."

So nobody said anything – except for a handful of people who said "Yes, they're lovely. Nice maps," – which was a lie, intended to humour the man.

He rented a prime trading site in a frontier town and sold his dreadful maps to unsuspecting tourists as they arrived in his country.

"Come buy my maps!" he would cry. "Buy my maps and see the sights!" he would add. "Thank you madam, and have a nice day!"

And still nobody said anything – except for a rival cartographer who said "My maps are better than his," which was taken to be an advertising slogan, not a statement of fact.

Now of course many of the unsuspecting tourists who bought these maps became hopelessly lost; some were never seen again. And as time passed it became apparent that a great number of sightseers were being found dead – in swamps that they had tried to walk across, or beneath cliffs that they had not expected to encounter, or on motorways that they had attempted to dive into – and always, they were holding one of the incompetent cartographer's maps.

"So? I sell a lot of maps," he remarked, indignantly. "The laws of probability are to blame."

A thorough investigation was mounted; a government enquiry was held; it examined all the evidence and questioned all the experts and reached the conclusion that foreigners were very stupid.

The incompetent cartographer merely exploited these tragedies. "Visit the most dangerous country in the world!" he proclaimed. "If you dare!"

Eventually, a wealthy traveller who was leaving the country, encased in plaster, demanded to see the incompetent cartographer.

"Look at me!" shrieked the traveller. "I bought one of your maps! And I trusted in it! I paused for sustenance at one of your recommended jungle picnic sites! where I was mauled by a bear – a polar bear! A polar bear that wasn't on the map!"

"I'm afraid that is not fault," sighed the incompetent cartographer. "I cannot be expected to mark the precise locations of bears, sharks or other hazardous chordates – they move around too much and jump out of the way of my potatoes."

"Well that's not bloody good enough!" replied the wealthy traveller, "I'll see you in court!"

"Come buy my maps!" wailed the incompetent cartographer. "Legally proved to be perfect in every detail!"

No one had the courage to challenge him again and so the scandal of the unnecessarily-dead-holiday-makers continued for many years, and people grew to accept it as a traditional part of national life.

Bureaucrats were dispatched to non-existent borders; small investors accidentally purchased volcanoes. A railway was inadvertently constructed underwater.

"Ho ho," murmured the thousands of injured trippers and the relatives of the dead. "Poetic justice."

So the incompetent cartographer set off with nothing but his own maps to guide him; and when he discovered that there was no southern coast, he settled instead for the agreeably deserted eastern coast – which he had previously held to be an expanse of frozen tundra.

He lived to a great age, enjoying his great wealth and nurturing the theory that his enemies had, somehow, moved the land in order to inconvenience him.