Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2000

Abstract

It's great to be home. I look out in this group. It may be the Philosophical Society, but it really looks to me like coming home. I see the Weinbergs, the Rostows. I went to law school because of Chris Dougherty. I have a "family" out here that I very seldom get to see, so it's a real rreac for me to be here.

For about a year and a half now, I've lived in Washington. If you visit Washington, a place you must go is the Library of Congress. And if you go to the Library of Congress, you ought to see the Madison Building, and there you ought to take a look at the two great Coronelli globes. These were made in the 1680s for Louis XIV. One is a depiction of the heavens and the other of the earth, as it was known then. If you walk around this magnificent work of art and look at the depiction of California, you’ll see the Bay of Baja extends all the way north, enclosing California as a island. Now, this is 1683. So, that depiction was in the teeth of reports by missionaries, trappers, and by Indians, who said that California was not, in fact, enclosed by the Bay of Baja. Nevertheless it was a common representation in the maps of that era. So, explorers would sail up the side of California, disembark, portage their ships up over the Sierras, and come down to the American desert, which was the largest beach they’d ever seen.

Disciplines

Law | National Security Law

Comments

© 2000 by the Philosophical Society of Texas.

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