Freiburger historische Bestände - digital

— 66 —

Germanicum)appears on the globe asDas mer von alemugna,
instead of Das teutsche Mer, is proof conclusive that one of
these popular charts was consulted when designing the
globe or preparing the map which served for its prototype.
Further evidence of such use is afforded by the outline
given to the British Isles, and possibly also by a few place
names in Western Africa, which are Italian rather than
German or Portuguese.

But whilst improving Ptolemy's northern Europe with
the aid of a Portolano chart, he blindly followed the
Greek cartographer in his delineation of the contours of
the Mediterranean, and this notwithstanding the fact that
the superiority of these Portolano charts had not only long
since been recognised by all seamen who had them in
daily use, but also by the compilers of a number of famous
maps of the world, including the Catalan Map of 1375,
which the King of Aragon presented to Charles V. of
France, and whose author may have been Hasdai Cresques,
a Jew of Barcelona;1 a map of 1457, for which we are
indebted to the learned Camadulite Fra Mauro, and
another of the same date, elliptical in shape, whose
unknown author, a Genoese, endeavoured to reconcile the
conflicting views of orthodox " cosmographers" and
mariners of experience. Behaim, however, erred in good
company, and for years after the completion of his globe
the mistaken views of Ptolemy respecting the longitudinal
extent of the Mediterranean were upheld by men of such
authority as Waldseemiiller (1507), Schoner (1520),
Gerhard Mercator (1538), and Jacobus Gastaldo (1548).
It is curious that not one of these learned " cosmographers "
should have undertaken to produce a revised version of
Ptolemy's map by retaining the latitudes (several of which
were known to have been from actual observation), whilst
rejecting his erroneous estimate of 500 stadia to a degree
in favour of the 700 stadia resulting from the measurement
of Eratosthenes (Strabo, II., c. 5). The result of
such a revision is shown on this little sketch, the scale of
which is the same as that of the Maplets on p. 36.

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PTOLEMY
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Meditebranean.

Toscanelli.2

The chart which the learned Toscanelli rent, in 1474, to
his friend Fernao Martins has been lost, whilst the only
information to be found in the letter which would enable
us to reconstruct it are the statements that on sailing due

1 Hamy, ' titudes,' p. 668.

' See p. 64 for literary references.

west from Lisbon, Quinsay in Mangi would be reached
after sailing across 26 " spaces " (of the projection) or 130
degrees of longitude, and that the distance between Antilia
and Zipangu amounted to 50 degrees. The distances
on Behaim's globe are approximately the same.3 S. Ruge
('Columbus,' 1890, p. 62) concludes from this that Behaim
may have copied Toscanelli's chart. This is quite possible,
for copies of both the chart and the letter may have been
forwarded by Toscanelli to his friend Regiomontanus at
Nuremberg, who had dedicated to him, in 1463, his
treatise ' De quadratura circuli.'

Portuguese Sources.

When Behaim, in the spring of 1490, left Lisbon for his
native Nuremberg, Bartolomeu Dias had been back from
his famous voyage round the Cape for over a twelvemonth,
numerous commercial and scientific expeditions had
improved the rough surveys made by the first explorers
along the Guinea coast, factories had been established at
Arguim, S. Jorge da Mina, Benin and, far within the
Sahara, at Wadan, trading expeditions had gone up the
Senegal and Gambia, and relations established with
Timbuktu, Melli and other states in the interior. In
addition to all this, ever since the days of Prince Henry
and the capture of Ceuta, in 1417, information on the
interior had been collected on the spot or from natives
who were brought to Lisbon to be converted to the
Christian faith.4

There is no doubt that the early Portuguese navigators
brought home excellent charts of their voyages. Columbus,
who saw the charts prepared by Bartolomeu Dias, speaks
of them as " depicting and describing from league to
league the track followed " by the explorer. But not one
of these original charts has survived, and had it not been
for copies made of them by Italians and others, our knowledge
of these early explorations would have been even less
perfect than it actually is. These copies were made use of
in the production of charts on a small scale, the place
names upon which, owing either to the carelessness of
the draughtsmen or their ignorance of Portuguese, are
frequently mutilated to an extent rendering them quite
unrecognisable. But even of maps of this imperfect kind
illustrating the time of Behaim and of a date anterior to
his globe, only two have reached us, namely the " Ginea
Portugalexe " ascribed to Cristofero Soligo, and a map of
the world by Henricus Martellus Germanus.5

Behaim, of course, enjoyed many opportunities for
examining the charts brought home by seamen not only,
but also other curious maps, whose existence has been

3 Lisbon to Zeitun 126°, but to Quinsay 130°.

* Such as Bemohi, King of the Jolof, and Caeuto of Congo.

* For a notice of these maps see pp. 26, 67. The only original
Portuguese chart of the fifteenth century discovered by Santarem is dated
1444, is on a small scale, extends no further than the Rio do ouro, and
was not deemed worthy a place in his famous atlas. (See ' Recherches,'
P. 292.)