Gold Coast Atlas

Summary

Malcolm E. Bondy reviews the fifth edition of the Gold Coast Atlas, published by the Gold Coast Survey Department in Accra in 1949 and recently acquired by the Library of Congress Map Division. He highlights its new gazetteer of 1,083 towns and villages, 161 rivers, and 62 high hills, alongside minor map revisions since the 1945 fourth edition. Of its twenty maps, seventeen cover the Gold Coast, two Africa, and one the world. Topics include administration, population, tribes, languages, physical features, geology, minerals, rainfall, forestry, agriculture, cattle areas and routes, and railways. The atlas also includes plans of Accra, Kumasi, and Takoradi and statistics on utilities, roads, railways, and administrative areas. Comparing it with another atlas previously noted in the Information Bulletin, Bondy identifies missing explanatory texts and disease-distribution maps, and directs medical-geography readers to other mapping of sleeping sickness and tropical diseases.