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Description

Balnibarbi -- From Gulliver's Travels

The location of Balnibarbi is illustrated in both the text and the map at the beginning of Part III of Gulliver's Travels, though they are not consistent with each other. The map shows Balnibarbi to be an island to the east of Japan and to the northeast of Luggnagg.  The text states that the kingdom of Balnibarbi is part of a continent which extends itself "eastward to that unknown tract of America westward of California and northward of the Pacific Ocean"  and places it southeast of Luggnagg, which is "situated to the North-West."

Gulliver gives his last known position (taken the morning “an hour before” he was captured by the pirates who set him adrift) as 46°N 183°(E)  (i.e. east of Japan, south of the Aleutian Islands) and was picked up by the inhabitants of Laputa just 5 days later, having drifted south-south-east down a chain of small rocky islands.  Gulliver also tells us that the island of Laputa flies by the “magnetick virtue” of certain minerals in the ground of Balnibarbi and does not extend more than four miles above, and six leagues beyond, beyond the limit of the kingdom.  He states the Pacific coast, where lies the port of Maldonada, is not above one hundred and fifty miles from the capital, Lagado.

Description

 The map appeared in Gulliver's Travels. The full title is:

Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World; By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships.  In Four Parts.  Part I.  A Voyage to Lilliput.  Part II.  A Voyage to Brobdingnag. Part II.  A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubrib, and Japan.  Part IV.  A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms.  London, Printed for C. Bathurst.  MDCCLXVIII

Gulliver's Travels is a prose satire by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. He himself claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it".  The book became popular as soon as it was published. John Gay wrote in a 1726 letter to Swift that "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery."

Gulliver begins his travels in May of 1699 and travels until December 1715.  

The present map appeared in the 1768 edition of the book.