A Story To Tell: Seeing Through the Minds of Two Admirals

In addition to these characteristics of a portolan- style map, Reis also uses colors to separate the land from the water in his map. He applies different tones of brown to construct a border between the mainland and the ocean, to divide territories, to make quantity of different areas more vivid and to show rivers and lakes. Within the mainland, the areas closer to water are emphasized with a lighter tone of brown. For the areas far from the water, he uses a darker tone of brown. In this way, Reis indicates that those areas are shores and he separates them from the deeper and higher parts of the mainland. In the land area, he uses thick black lines to separate certain territories and to indicate lakes and rivers. To visually represent the Atlantic Ocean, Reis includes a shade of blue into his use of brown. He maintains his main color as brown to visualize the ocean, but the shade of blue he included helps the reader to make the distinction between the land and the ocean.