not show on a map. The truth of a place is in the joy and 
     the hurt that come from it. I had best not put my trust in 
     anything as inadequate as a map, he counselled. . . . I 
     understand now, although I did not at the time, that my 
     airy and easy sweep of map-traced staggering distances 
     belittled the journeys he had measured on tired feet. With 
     my big map-talk, I had effaced the magnitude of his 
     cargo-laden, heat-weighted treks.

     All the words in the world cannot describe an object like a 
bucket, although it is possible to tell in a few words how to 
make  a bucket. This inadequacy of words to convey visual 
information about objects was an effectual block to the 
development of the Greek and Roman sciences. Pliny the Elder 
reported the inability of the Greek and Latin botanists to devise 
a means of transmitting information about plants and flowers: