The purpose of exaggeration was, of course, to emphasize the most interesting and significant localities. For example, on many maps of the world, Palestine—about which a good deal was known and in which interest naturally was centered—is shown to be almost as large as all the rest of Asia put together. The Jerome map of the East[1128] exaggerates Asia Minor to an enormous size, making it a greater distance from Constantinople to Mount Ararat than from Armenia to Taprobane (Ceylon). On the other hand, the Jerome map of Palestine itself[1129] would lead us to believe that the district lying between the Lebanon, the Jordan, and the sea is at least three times as large as the Anatolian peninsula. Certainly nobody ever thought that such proportions actually obtain in nature. Similarly, the plans of cities that are not infrequently included in maps are often immensely enlarged in relation to the surrounding country, as, for example, in the case of London, Rome, Acre, and Jerusalem on Matthew Paris’ pictorial itinerary[1130] and map of Palestine,[1131] and Jerusalem on the “Situs Ierusalem”[1132] (see Fig. 7). DISTORTION Errors arising from distortion were due partly to ignorance and partly to the necessity of making the map fit either the page upon which it was drawn or else a preconceived idea of an oval, or circular world. The “Cotton,” or “Anglo-Saxon,” map[1133] several of the Beatus series,[1134] and even Matthew Paris’ maps of Britain[1135] (the best of the whole period; see Fig. 9, p. 343, below) show a semi-rectangular land mass corresponding to the pages of the codices. On the latter a legend frankly admits that, if only the size of the page permitted, the island would be shown longer than it is (“Si pagine pateretur, haec totalis insula longior esse deberet”).[1136] The manner in which geography was forced to conform to a circular or oval world is admirably illustrated in the treatment of the islands of the ocean. On the Beatus series[1137] and on Lambert’s _mappaemundi_,[1138] Britain and the other islands appear as small, round, oval, or rectangular blocks more or less regularly spaced in the circumambient ocean. Other maps, like that of Henry of Mayence[1139] (see inset of Fig. 6, p. 245, above), fit the islands into recesses in the oceanic shores of the continental areas so that the smooth outlines of the whole land mass are preserved. [Illustration: FIG. 7—The _Situs Ierusalem_, or plan of Jerusalem, illustrating the anonymous _Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium_ as reproduced by Miller, _Mappaemundi_, vol. iii, 1895, fig. 14, from map in Codex of St. Omer. ]