On one of these
occasions, I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I
thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond
expression; it contained harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and
with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my
performance 'Treasure Island.' I am told there are people who do
not care for maps, and find it hard to believe. The names, the
shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the
prehistoric footsteps of man still distinctly traceable up hill and
down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries,
perhaps the Standing Stone or the Druidic Circle on the heath; here
is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see
or twopence-worth of imagination to understand with! No child but
must remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the
infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies.
Somewhat in this way, as I paused upon my map of 'Treasure Island,'
the future character of the book began to appear there visibly
among imaginary woods; and their brown faces and bright weapons
peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters, as they passed to and
fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a
flat projection.
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