to the medieval cartographer, whose efforts resembled modern 
nonobjective art. The shock of the new Renaissance space is 
still felt by natives who encounter it today for the first time. 
Prince Modupe tells in his autobiography, I Was a Savage , how 
he had learned to read maps at school, and how he had taken 
back home to his village a map of a river his father had 
travelled for years as a trader.

          . . . my father thought the whole idea was absurd. 
     He refused to identify the stream he had crossed at 
     Bomako, where it is no deeper, he said, than a man is 
     high, with the great widespread waters of the vast Niger 
     delta. Distances as measured in miles had no meaning for 
     him. . . . Maps are liars, he told me briefly. From his tone 
     of voice I could tell that I had offended him in some way 
     not known to me at the time. The things that hurt one do