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Phantom geographyThe 'Long River' a French baron simply made up
A 1710 map of North America, advertised as 'corrected by the Royal Society', maps a major river that was pure invention.
John Senex's 1710 map of North America carries a proud title: it claims to be corrected from the observations communicated to the Royal Society at London and the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. And yet running west across the continent is the prominent Rivière Longue — the 'Long River' — a waterway that does not exist.
It came straight from the 1703 travel account of Baron de Lahontan, now regarded as a fabrication. The map even hedges, noting that the western stretch was 'drawn by the Savages on deerskins.' Nearby sit the legendary kingdoms of Quivira and Teguayo, the Cities of Gold that Coronado had marched north to find a century and a half earlier.
The irony is total: a map advertising the authority of Europe's two great scientific academies, confidently charting a river that was never there. Note, too, what it gets right — unlike many of its contemporaries, Senex draws California correctly as a peninsula.
Sources: WSU Libraries (MASC); Texas General Land Office, Holcomb Map Collection
