The Story of Geographical Discovery | Page 2

as a landlocked body of water, while he appears to have some knowledge of the so ces of the Nile. The general tendency of the map is to extend Asia very much to the east, which led to the miscalculation encouraging Columbus to discover America.
THE ROMAN ROADS OF EUROPE (drawn specially for this work).--These give roughly the limits within which the inland geographical knowledge of the ancients reach some degrees of accuracy.
GEOGRAPHICAL MONSTERS (from an early edition of Mandeville's Travels).--Most of the medi?val maps were dotted over with similar monstrosities.
THE HEREFORD MAP.--This, one of the best known of medi?val maps, was drawn by Richard of Aldingham about 1307. Like most of these maps, it has the East with the terrestrial paradise at the top, and Jerusalem is represented as the centre.
PEUTINGER TABLE, WESTERN PART.--This is the only Roman map extant; it gives lines of roads from the eastern shores of Britain to the Adriatic Sea. It is really a kind of bird's-eye view taken from the African coast. The Mediterranean runs as a thin strip through the lower part of the map. The lower section joins on to the upper.
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO IBN HAUKAL (from Lelewel, G��ographie du mon age).--This map, like most of the Arabian maps, has the south at the top. It is practically only a diagram, and is thus similar to the Hereford Map in general form.--Misr=Egypt, Fars=Persia, Andalus=Spain.
COAST-LINE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN (from the Portulano of Dulcert, 1339, given in Nordenskiold's Facsimile Atlas).--To illustrate the accuracy with which mariners' charts gave the coast-lines as contrasted with the merely symbolical representation of other medi?val maps.
FRA MAURO MAP, 1457 (from Lelewel, loc. Cit.).--Here, as usual, the south is placed at the top of the map. Besides the ordinary medi?val conceptions, Fra Mauro included the Portuguese discoveries along the coast of Africa up to his time, 1457.
PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES IN AFRICA (from E. J. Payne, European Colonies, 1877).--Giving the successive points reached by the Portuguese navigators during the fifteenth century.
PORTUGUESE INDIES (from Payne, loc. Cit.).--All the ports mentioned in ordinary type were held by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century.
THE TOSCANELLI MAP (from Kretschmer, Entdeckung Amerikas, 1892).--This is a reconstruction of the map which Columbus got from the Italian astronomer and cartographer Toscanelli and used to guide him in his voyage across the Atlantic. Its general resemblance to the Behaim Globe will be remarked.
THE BEHAIM GLOBE.--This gives the information about the world possessed in 1492, just as Columbus was starting, and is mainly based upon the map of Toscanelli, which served as his guide. It will be observed that there is no other continent between Spain and Zipangu or Japan, while the fabled islands of St. Brandan and Antilia are represented bridging the expanse between the Azores and Japan.
AMERIGO VESPUCCI (from Fiske's School History of the United States, by kind permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.)
FERDINAND MAGELLAN (from Fiske's School History of the United States, by kind permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.)
MAP OF THE WORLD, from the Ptolemy Edition of 1548 (after Kretschmer's Entdeckungsgeschichte Amerikas).--It will be observed that Mexico is supposed to be joined on to Asia, and that the North Pacific was not even known to exist.
RUSSIAN ASIA (after the Atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1737, by kind permission of Messrs. Hachette). Japan is represented as a peninsula.
AUSTRALIA AS KNOWN IN 1745 (from D'Anville's Atlas, by kind permission of Messrs. Hachette).--It will be seen that the Northern and Western coasts were even by this time tolerably well mapped out, leaving only the eastern coast to be explored by Cook.
AUSTRALIA, showing routes of explorations (prepared specially for the present volume). The names of the chief explorers are given at the top of the map.
AFRICA AS KNOWN IN 1676 (from Dapper's Atlas).--This includes a knowledge of most of the African river sand lakes due to the explorations of the Portuguese.
AFRICA (made specially for this volume, to show chief explorations and partition).--The names of the explorers are given at the foot of the map itself.
NORTH POLAR REGIONS, WESTERN HALF (prepared specially for the present volume from the Citizen's Atlas, by kind permission of Messrs. Bartholomew).--This gives the results of the discoveries due to Franklin expeditions and most of the searchers after the North-West Passage.
NORTH POLAR REGIONS, EASTERN HALF.--This gives the Siberian coast investigated by the Russians and Nordenskiold, as well as Nansen's Farthest North.
CLIMBING THE NORTH POLE (prepared specially for this volume). Giving in graphic form the names of the chief Arctic travellers and the latitude N. reached from John Davis (1587) to Nansen (1895).

THE STORY OF
GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY

INTRODUCTION
How was the world discovered? That is to say, how did a certain set of men who lived round the Mediterranean Sea, and had acquired the art of recording what each generation had learned, become successively aware