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independently is made manifest by the following table,
which gives the southern declination for the first of January
of each of the four years of a cycle.
January 1
Enciao,
Llrro de Marinharia.
] Pedro de
M. Ptmentel,
Recent
Tables
(1893-97).
(Old Style).
1519.
lit Set.
2nd Set.
; Medina, 1545.
Arte de
Navigar, 1685.
o
0
o
o
O f
1st year
21
54
21
52
21
48
; i
51
21
54
21 53
2nd „
21
66
21
64
21
60
21
54
21
56
21 55
8rd „
21
58
21
57
21
62
21
56
21
58
21 57
4th „
22
00
21
68
21
54
21
58
22
00
22 00
Breusing, Gunther and Ruge on Behaim,s services
on the Junta.
It is now time to ask what, in the opinion of competent
critics, had Behaim done to entitle him to a
position on a scientific committee which J. de Barros
assigns to him, or the appointment as cosmographer and
astronomer of the important expedition which left
Portugal in 1485 under the leadership of Diogo Cao ?
Dr. A. Breusing,1 Director of the School of Navigation
at Bremen, who lays stress upon the importance of
improved instruments of observation, contents himself
with suggesting that Behaim made known in Portugal
the cross-staff and a metal astrolabe of handier size than
those which he supposes to have been in use up to his time.
Dr. S. Gunther2 suggests that Behaim paid a visit to
Lisbon in 1482 or 1488, that he there heard of the efforts
which were being made to improve the art of pilotage,
whereupon he let it be known in the course of conversation
, that he, as a pupil of the great astronomer
ltegiomontanus, had acquired knowledge likely to prove
of great service to mariners. The King, when he learnt
this, invited the young stranger to join the Junta dos
mathematicos, which had recently been appointed.
Behaim, as a matter of course, accepted this invitation,
and thus secured a position in Portugal. He then
returned to Germany, to wind up his affairs, went back to
Portugal in 1484, and was at once appointed to
accompany an expedition for the exploration of South
Africa. Gunther then maintains that the introduction of
the cross-staff and of the * Ephemerides' most amply
justified the Portuguese mathematicians in inviting this
youthful stranger to join in their deliberations.
Dr. Sophus Ruge, in a review of Gunther's excellent
biography,3 accepts the view that Behaim paid a flying
visit to Lisbon in 1482, where he boasted of having
studied astronomy under Regiomontanus, and was commissioned
in consequence to procure certain astronomical
1 'Zeitschr. d. Ges. f. Erdkunde,' Berlin, 1869, p. 105.
i 'Martin Behaim' (Bamberg, 1890, pp. 13, 25).
3 Petermann's Mitteilungen, 1890, Lit. No. 1,680.
instruments, including a cross-staff, for which his
native Nuremberg was famous. With that object he
visited Nuremberg in 1483, was taught there the use of
these instruments, and although never appointed a
member of the Junta, his technical advice proved of such
value that it secured him the appointment as astronomer
of Cao's expedition.
All this is most ingenious, no doubt, but it is mere
conjecture. He might have paid a visit to Lisbon in
1482, for nothing is known of his movements between
June 9, 1479, when he was at Antwerp, and February,
1483, when he was summoned before the magistrates at
Nuremberg for having danced at a Jew's wedding.
Instead of returning immediately to Lisbon with his
instruments, he attended the Easter fair at Frankfurt,
and the fair at Bergen in October or November, where he
bought cloth and borrowed money, and was only ready on
May 4, 1484, to leave Antwerp for "foreign parts."4 The
documents still available mention cloth, galls, and a few
other articles as the merchandise he dealt in, but refer in
no single instance to "instruments." Had he been
commissioned to buy instruments at Nuremberg, as
conjectured by Dr. Ruge, he would no doubt have
returned immediately to his mandatories. At the same
time it is curious that a supposed pupil of Regiomontanus
should have been obliged to visit Nuremberg in order to
make himself acquainted with the use of instruments
invented or manufactured by his master. Still, it is just
possible that Behaim did import instruments into
Portugal, but there is absolutely no proof extant that he
ever did so.
VII. BEHAIM'S AFRICAN VOYAGE, 1484-85.
It is to an alleged voyage with Diogo Cao, either as
astronomer or, as he himself asserts, as captain of one of
the two vessels of the expedition, that Behaim owes the
title of Navarchus, Seefahrer, or Navigator. Behaim
himself has given two versions of this voyage, but before
placing these before the reader I shall sketch the progress
of Portuguese discovery along the west coast of Africa up
to the year 1490.5
Portuguese Voyages of Discoveries, 1472-82.
When John II. in 1481 ascended the throne of his
father Affonso, the Guinea coast had been explored as far
* See Chapter IV., p. 9.
6 For a fuller account of these explorations see my essay on 'The
Voyage of Diogo Cao and Bartholomew Dias' (' Geographical Journal,'
Dec. 1900). Since writing this paper important rock inscriptions referring
to Cao's second expedition have been discovered at the mouth of the river
Mposo, near Matadi.
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