An interesting map is on display in the British Museum in London. It’s an old mariner’s
chart, drawn in 1525, outlining the North American coast- line and adjacent waters. At that time
most of the new continent’s interior had not been explored, with but a few hundred miles of
coastline being the only evidence of what lay beyond.
The handful of explorers who had visited the Americas had relied upon the scattered Indian
tribes for information about the land. In many cases, since the natives had no wish that these
strange visitors from the sea should venture forth over their land, they had created fanciful tales
and legends as being an accurate description of what the new land held in store for anyone
adventurous or foolhardy enough to take the task.
With these tales in mind, the cartographer made some intriguing notations on areas of the
map that represented regions not then explored. He wrote: “Here be giants,” “Here be fiery
scorpions,” and “Here be dragons”.
Eventually, the map came into the possession of Sir John Franklin, a British explorer in the
early 1800’s. Musing over these fanciful and mythical inscriptions, he scratched them out one by
one, and in their stead he wrote these words across the map: “Here is God”.

~ David Sargent
Jacksonville church of Christ, Jacksonville, AL

And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once, and possess it; for
we are well able to overcome it”. But the men that went up with him said, “We are not able to go
up against the people; for they are stronger than we”. And they brought up an evil report of the
land which they had spied out unto the children of Israel saying , “The land is a land that eats up
the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature and we were
like grasshoppers in our own sight”. Joshua and Caleb rent their clothes and said,” If Jehovah
delights in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it unto us; a land which flows with
milk and honey” (Numbers 13:30-33; 14: 6, 8, KJV).