… In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such a Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which conceded point for point with it. The following Generations, which were so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that the vast Map was Useless, and not with out some Pitilessness in it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are tattered ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
The full text of ‘On Exactitude in Science’ by Jorge Luis Borges, fictionally attributed to Suárez Miranda in Viajes de varones prudentes. Translated by Andrew Hurley, published by Penguin Books, New York, 1998.