The confusion about where the chasm line is drawn is actually related to several problems. The first is because of errors on my part, the map just didn’t end up looking like it needed in order to match the text. In the Tenth Anniversary edition, Raoden draws the line in the right place. I wrote ELANTRIS early in my career, and I just wasn’t as polished as I am now at making things fit together in my endings.
I also didn’t have Peter back then. This time I actually had Peter and Isaac, who does all the maps, get together, work out the actual math. The size of the city, the size of the continent, and all this stuff and Isaac’s doing a new map and we are changing the text to now match that map. So for instance where it says something is in the original text it will actually move now that we have an actual real map, rather than my MS Paint thing that I was using ‘cause you know me and maps. So yeah you nodded, there are a lot of mathematical– just problems. We’ve got the new map now and it all works. So I’m glad that it all actually works, once you get the math right. But like the number of steps is way off at the end of the first edition for instance.
You can see all the maps here, and read an article about the creation of the original map here.