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expressed a desire to be placed with good (fromme) people
engaged in commerce, declared his willingness to be bound
for three years, and promised to shirk no drudgery as long
as it would help him in his business career. This question
of a change was no doubt considered by his mother, his
uncle and by Bartels von Eyb, the friend and adviser of
his mother, for early in the following year, if not before,
we find our young merchant transferred to the cloth-dye-
house of Fritz Heberlein, a Nuremberger established at
Antwerp. That city, in the course of the fifteenth
century, had grown into the most important seaport of
the Netherlands, partly in consequence of the decay of
Brugge, due to the silting-up of the Zwyn, which up till
then had permitted sea-going vessels to sail up to that
city, but more especially owing to the Scheldt having
excavated for itself a more direct course to the sea which
enabled vessels of the largest burden to proceed up to the
wharves of the town. To judge from a letter which young
Martin wrote to his uncle Leonhard on June 8, 1479,1 he
was well pleased with his stay there. He was a favourite
with his master and the members of the household, whilst
the foreman, in return for being taught arithmetic,2 initiated
him into all the mysteries of the cloth-trade. He worked
at his trade like any other journeyman, and in proof of
the busy life he led he states that notwithstanding that
there was but one other journeyman beside himself, his
master, in the course of a year, finished and set quite
900 pieces of cloth belonging to about a dozen merchants.
Behaim, whilst in the service of Heberlein, was permitted
to speculate in cloth on his own account on condition of
the cloth being dyed in his master's dye-house. Three
hundred gulden 3 which he had received from his mother,
at the last Frankfurt Lent-fair, had been invested by him
at the Bergen fair * in English white cloth, which the men
in the dye-house pronounced to be of very superior quality.
This cloth, when he wrote his letter, had already been
teazled, raised and cut ; it was to be dyed in the course of
a week, after which it would be set, finished, and folded,
and forwarded to Nuremberg, where he hoped it would
realise a good profit. He takes this opportunity to express
a wish for a senior partner, who would put money into the
business, and by whose experience he might profit. Every
business, he tells his uncle, should be carried on in
partnership, one partner to buy, the other to sell.

1 See Appendix IV., p. 109.

2 Algorithm, or ciphering, according to the decimal notation, as
employed by the Arabs, first described by Leonardo Bonacci, of Pisa, in
his 'Liber Abaci,' 1202.

3 Each of these gulden was worth about 10 shillings.

4 Mr. B. J. Mes, Keeper of the Archives of Bergen-of-Zoom, kindly
informs me that the town had two fairs annually, one a Voorjaarmarkt,
which began a fortnight after Easter and lasted three weeks, and a koude
markt, which began in the middle of October and lasted six weeks. Both
the " early " and " cold " fairs were much frequented by English merchants,
who occupied the stores in a street still called Engehche Siraat. The
"early" fair in 1749 thus lasted from April 25 to May 16, and, as the
Frankfurt fair ended on April 21, there was plenty of time to visit the
former.

A Supposed Visit to Lisbon, 1481 or 1483.

From June 8, 1479, the date of the interesting letter
which we have thus largely quoted, up to March 1, 1483,
on which day Martin Behaim appeared before a magistrate
at Nuremberg to answer a charge of having danced on
Ember day at a Jewish wedding, we know absolutely
nothing about his movements. Most probably he resided
during the whole of that time at Antwerp, occasionally
visiting the Frankfurt fair and his friends at Nuremberg.
Dr. S. Giinther,6 however, and Dr. S. Ruge,6 suppose him
to have paid during that time a flying visit to Lisbon.
The former supposes that visit to have been paid in 1483.
At Lisbon he might thus have heard about the efforts
which were being made to improve the art of navigation,
and having mentioned incidentally that as a pupil of the
famous Regiomontanus he had some knowledge of
astronomical observations, was summoned before the king
and invited to join a Junta dos Mathematicos. Behaim,
Dr. Giinther supposes, then returned to Antwerp, wound
up his business, came back to Lisbon, entered the
Portuguese service, and was appointed cosmographer of
Cao's expedition.

Dr. Ruge suggests that he visited Lisbon in 1481, and
came to Nuremberg for the purpose of procuring astronomical
instruments.

It need hardly be added that all this is mere conjecture
. As to the Junta I shall have to say more in a
following chapter.

A Dance at a Jew's Wedding.

After this digression let us return to Nuremberg and
the 1st of March, 1483; when Martin Behaim, Hans
Imhof and three others were charged with having been
present at a Jew's wedding on Ember day (February 26).
Martin Behaim and Sebald Deichsler, having actually
danced at that wedding—a heinous offence, as it was Lent
—were condemned to a week's imprisonment; the others
escaped with a reprimand. The sentence, in the case of
Behaim, was allowed to stand over until his return from
an intended visit to the fair at Frankfurt.7 History doth
not tell whether the culprit ever returned to Nuremberg
to undergo his punishment.

Departure from Antwerp, 1484.

We next meet with Martin Behaim in October or
November, 1483, at the "cold" fair at Bergen,8 when
Hamran Gross, on behalf of Nicolas Schlewitzer of

5 Giinther, 'Martin Behaim,'p. 12.

6 Petermann's Mitteilungen, 1890, Litt. No. 1,680.

7 For the legal documents referring to this case see Appendix,
p. 110. The Frankfurt fair began on March 19.

8 The incident* referred to in what follows are detailed in a legal
document drawn up at Nuremberg in February, 1489, and published by
Dr. Giinther (' Martin Behaim,' p. 53-54). The bonds given by Behaim to
Leonhard Hirschvogel and Nicolas Schlewitzer on May 4, 1484, are

C