Stick Chart

     Stick-charts were used to teach and record the swells of the sea. The charts were hardly maps in a western sense: the cowrie shells did signify islands, but they could often be taken to be any island. Distances were quite arbitrary and charts were meaningless without the guidance of their maker. The charts were not taken to sea, but memorized.
      There are two basic kinds : the mattang and the rebbelib, the first for instruction only in swell-patterns, the second showing the place of islands in the group or one of its chains. A third type, the medo, was more local, placing a few atolls only. Some believe these last two to be of recent introduction, influenced by western chart-making.
     The chart on the stamp is of the rebbelib type and presumably shows the Marshall Islands.

Love

     This projection which is thought to have been perfected by Apianus, was not devised because of its artistic possibilities; it was based upon a carefully conceived formula designed to maintain distances. It was described by Johannes Werner in Nova translatio primi libri geographiae C. Ptolemaei, Nuremberg, 1514, and first published bound with the edition of Solinus' Polyhistor given at Vienna by Johann Kamers [Camertius] in 1520. The projection is equal-area and shows distances correctly to scale only from the center. Iceland, Madagascar and Sri Lanka are missing

The Oregon Trail ~ 1843

     The Oregon Trail began near Independence, Missouri and ended nearly 2000 miles west at the Columbia River near the Pacific Coast. The stamp was issued to mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Oregon Trail. The original design showed the east-west border of Washington following the course of the Snake River. The design was corrected so that the border follows the 46th parallel to the Idaho border in the stamp that was issued in 1993. A stamp issued in 1936 (SCN 783) also shows a map with the Oregon Trail.