Atlas Novus – Blaeu’s Maps

The map here shows the extent of Mackay Country in the early 17th century when it was known as ‘Strathnaverne’.  This is a ‘Blaeu’ map, printed in the Netherlands by Joan Blaeu in 1654. 

 

The key maps and information for the final map were created by Timothy Pont while he was Minister at Dunnet in Caithness between about 1600 till about 1612 – 13.  His brother Zachary was Minister at Bower in Caithness and his sister Margaret, married Alexander Borthuik and lived in Tongue for a time.  [1]

 

The Atlas novus was in Latin and Volume V focused on Scotland.  As Chris Fleet of the National Library of Scotland notes in his ‘The history behind the publication of the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland’:

 

“The publication of Volume V of Blaeu’s Atlas novus was the result of over 70 years of cartographic, chorographic and editorial activity, by a dispersed network of people in Scotland and the Low Countries.  Through their combined efforts, dogged by war, poverty, copyright restrictions and only intermittent official support, ‘Scotland became one of the best mapped countries in the world’ (Stone 1989) and the Atlas remains to this day a uniquely significant landmark publication.”[2]

 

What had the Altas novus to say

about Mackay Country?

 

All that it has to say is written in Latin.  Many place names and mountain names are not therefore given in the text because they cannot be translated into Latin. 

 

Of Eddrachillis, it is noted that the name means ‘between two straits’ or kyles.  The area is described as:

 

“..completely rough with pathless woods and mountains, admitting of cultivation in only a few places; the sea and all the neighbouring parts have fish, the gulfs are rich in herring, the mountains most suited to hunting and fouling, at the small Loch Stack is a wooded area, where all the stags are found with forked tails.”[1]

 

There are observations too on how the hunting was organised in some corners:

 

“On the Isthmus at the promontory Faraid Head, when herds of deer are driven there and trapped by an encircling crowd of men and by the sea, and dogs are let loose among them, there is pleasant and productive hunting.”[2]

 

Although there is precious little cultivable land, when compared to Sutherland (as it was then) with its good east coast soils, it is noted that the ground is well suited to pastoralism and there are therefore herds of horses, cattle and goats and “there is no scarcity of fish, meat or milk products”.[3] 

 

 

 

 

[1] From Eddrachillis: A New Description – Camden???

 

[2] Ibid

 

[3] Ibid

 

 

 

 

[1] NLS web XXXXX

 

[2] C. Fleet The history behind the publication of the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland National Library website www.nls.uk