Gutenkarte downloads public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, and then feeds them to MetaCarta's GeoParser API, which extracts and returns all the geographic locations it can find. Gutenkarte stores these locations in a database, along with citations into the text itself, and offers an interface where the book can be browsed by chapter, by place, or all at once on an interactive map.The project aims to at some point allow readers to edit the geographical points stored in its database for particular works. So, the comments below are based on the documents as they are now posted.
The map which accompanies the first chapter covers the area between New York and the top of Lake Champlain. The place names listed are those, including Fort Edward (see the quotation below) which the GeoParser finds within the text. However, as the image makes clear the large scale of the map, combined with the lack of detail in the map itself, makes the map helpful in only the broadest sense, and, more importantly, not helpful in bringing alive the "spatial component" of Cooper's own description of the setting of the book's opening action.
In Chapter 1, Cooper describes in very clear detail the area in which the action is—at least—to begin:
The news had been brought, toward the decline of a day in midsummer, by an Indian runner, who also bore an urgent request from Munro, the commander of a work on the shore of the "holy lake," for a speedy and powerful reinforcement. It has already been mentioned that the distance between these two posts was less than five leagues. The rude path, which originally formed their line of communication, had been widened for the passage of wagons; so that the distance which had been traveled by the son of the forest in two hours, might easily be effected by a detachment of troops, with their necessary baggage, between the rising and setting of a summer sun. The loyal servants of the British crown had given to one of these forest-fastnesses the name of William Henry, and to the other that of Fort Edward, calling each after a favorite prince of the reigning family. (Gutenkarte's emphasis)
Cooper's verbal "mapping" of the area names the two points Fort William Henry and Fort Edward and describes the distance between them, both in terms of distance—"five leagues"—and in terms of time—a day's travel for a troop of soldiers. So, Cooper gives us a very clear idea of the setting for the action, even giving evidence which the resourceful reader could use to research the history or geography in more detail.
The other shortcomings are also revealing for this type of project...
