Chapter I: Columbus and His Discoveries (5)

This globe, which has been distinctively known as Schöner’s globe, is preserved at Nuremberg. There are representations of it in Santarem, Lelewel, Wieser, Ghillany’s _Behaim_, Kohl’s _Geschichte der Entdeckungsreisen zur Magellan’s-Strasse_ (Berlin, 1877), p. 8; H. H. Bancroft’s _Central America_, i. 137; and in _Harper’s Magazine_, February, 1871, and December, 1882, p. 731. The earliest engraving appeared in the _Jahresbericht der technischen Anstalten in Nürnberg für 1842_, accompanied by a paper by Dr. Ghillany; and the same writer reproduced it in his _Erdglobus des Behaim und der des Schöner_ (1842). The globe is signed: “Perfecit eum Bambergæ 1520, Joh. Schönerus.” Cf. Von Murr, _Memorabilia bibliothecarum Noribergensium_ (1786), i. 5; Humboldt, _Examen critique_, ii. 28; Winsor’s _Bibliography of Ptolemy_ sub anno 1522; and Vol. III. p. 214, of the present _History_.]

We have a suspicion of this strait in another map which has been held to have had some connection with the drafts of Columbus, and that is the Ruysch map, which appeared in the Roman Ptolemy of 1508,[433] the earliest published map, unless the St. Dié map takes precedence, to show any part of the new discoveries.

Twelve gores of a globe found in a copy of the _Cosmographiæ introductio_, published at Lugduni, 1514 (?), and engraved in a catalogue of Tross, the Paris bookseller, in 1881 (nos. xiv. 4,924). The book is now owned by Mr. C. H. Kalbfleisch, of New York. Harrisse (_Cabots_, p. 182) says the map was engraved in 1514, and ascribes it to Louis Boulenger. (Cf. Vol. III. p. 214, of the present _History_.) There are two copies of this edition of the _Cosmographiæ introductio_ in the British Museum; and D’Avezac (_Waltzemüller_, p. 123) says the date of it cannot be earlier than 1517. Harrisse says he erred in dating it 1510 in the _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 63. Cf. Winsor’s _Bibliography of Ptolemy_ sub anno 1522.]

It seems from its resemblance to the La Cosa chart to have been kept much nearer the Columbian draft than the geographer of St. Dié, with his Portuguese helps, was contented to leave it in his map. In La Cosa the vignette of St. Christopher had concealed the mystery of a westerly passage;[434] Ruysch assumes it, or at least gives no intimation of his belief in the inclosure of the Antillian Sea. Harrisse[435] has pointed out how an entirely different coast-nomenclature in the two maps points to different originals of the two map-makers. The text of this 1508 edition upon “Terra Nova” and “Santa Cruz” is by Marcus Beneventanus. There are reasons to believe that the map may have been issued separately, as well as in the book; and the copies of the map in the Barlow Collection and in Harvard College Library are perhaps of this separate issue.[436]

The distinctive features both of the La Cosa and the Ruysch drafts, of the Cantino map and of the Waldseemüller or St. Dié map of 1513, were preserved, with more or less modifications in many of the early maps. The Stobnicza map—published in an _Introductio_ to Ptolemy at Cracow in 1512—is in effect the St. Dié map, with a western ocean in place of the edge of the plate as given in the 1513 Ptolemy, and is more like the draft of Reisch’s map published three years later.

There are other drawings of this map in Stevens’s _Notes_; in Nordenskiöld’s _Bröderna Zenos_ (Stockholm, 1883); etc.]

The Schöner globe of 1515, often cited as the Frankfort globe; the Schöner globe of 1520; the so-called Tross gores of 1514-1519; the map of Petrus Apianus[437]—or Bienewitz, as he was called in his vernacular—which appeared in the _Polyhistoria_ of Solinus, edited by the Italian monk Camers, and also in 1522 in the _De orbis situ_ of Pomponius Mela, published by Vadianus,—all preserve the same characteristics with the St. Dié map, excepting that they show the western passage referred to in Columbus’ dream, and so far unite some of the inferences from the map of Ruysch. There was a curious survival of this Cantino type, particularly as regards North America for many years yet to come, as seen in the map which Münster added to the Basle edition of the _Novus orbis_ in 1532 and 1537, and in the drawing which Jomard gives[438] as from “une cassette de la Collection Trivulci, dite Cassettina all’Agemina.” This last drawing is a cordiform mappemonde, very like another which accompanied Honter’s _Rudimenta cosmographica_ in 1542, and which was repeated in various editions to as late a period as 1590. Thus it happened that for nearly a century geographical views which the earliest navigators evolved, continued in popular books to convey the most inadequate notion of the contour of the new continent.[439]

The map is given in its original projection in Lelewel, pl. xlv., and on a greatly reduced scale in Daly’s _Early Cartography_, p. 32. There are copies of this 1511 Ptolemy in the Lenox, Carter-Brown, Astor, Brevoort, Barlow, and Kalbfleisch collections. Cf. _Murphy Catalogue_, no. 2,051, for a copy now in the American Geographical Society’s Library, and references in Winsor’s _Bibliography of Ptolemy_ sub anno 1511.]

In the same year with the publication of the Peter Martyr map of 1511, an edition of Ptolemy, published at Venice and edited by Bernardus Sylvanus, contained a mappemonde on a cordiform projection,—which is said to be the first instance of the use of this method in drafting maps. What is shown of the new discoveries is brought in a distorted shape on the extreme western verge of the map; and to make the contour more intelligible, it is reduced in the sketch annexed to an ordinary plane projection. It is the earliest engraved map to give any trace of the Cortereal discoveries[440] and to indicate the Square, or St. Lawrence, Gulf. It gives a curious Latinized form to the name of the navigator himself in “Regalis Domus” (Cortereal), and restores Greenland, or Engronelant, to a peninsular connection with northwestern Europe as it had appeared in the Ptolemy of 1482.

It will be seen that, with the exception of the vague limits of the “Regalis Domus,” there was no sign of the continental line of North America in this map of Sylvanus. Much the same views were possessed by the maker of the undated Lenox globe, which probably is of nearly the same date, and of which a further account is given elsewhere.[441]

Another draft of a globe, likewise held to be of about the same date, shows a similar configuration, except that a squarish island stands in it for Florida and adjacent parts of the main. This is a manuscript drawing on two sheets preserved among the Queen’s collections at Windsor; and since Mr. R. H. Major made it known by a communication, with accompanying fac-similes, in the _Archæologia_,[442] it has been held to be the work of Leonardo da Vinci, though this has been recently questioned.[443]

Another sketch of this hemisphere is given in _Harper’s Monthly_, December, 1882, p. 733.]

If deprived of the associations of that august name, the map loses much of its attraction; but it still remains an interesting memorial of geographical conjecture. It is without date, and can only be fixed in the chain of cartographical ideas by its internal evidence. This has led Major to place it between 1512 and 1514, and Wieser to fix it at 1515-1516.[444] A somewhat unsatisfactory map, since it shows nothing north of “Ysabella” and “Spagnollo,” is that inscribed _Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem exactissime depicta_, 1522, L. F., which is the work of Laurentius Frisius, and appeared in the Ptolemy of 1522.[445]

This follows the projection as given by Wieser in his _Magalhaês-Strasse_, who dates it 1515-1516.]

A new element appears in a map which is one of the charts belonging to the _Yslegung der Mer-Carthen oder Cartha Marina_, said also to be the work of Frisius, which was issued in 1525, in exposition of his theories of sea-charts.[446]

This is drawn from a sketch given by Kohl in his manuscript, “On the Connection of the New and Old World on the Pacific Side,” preserved in the American Antiquarian Society’s Library. There is another copy in his Washington Collection.

The map is explained by the following key: 1. Asia. 2. India. 3. Ganges. 4. Java major. 5. Cimpangi [Japan]. 6. Isola verde [Greenland?]. 7. Cuba. 8. Iamaiqua. 9. Spagnola. 10. Monde nuova [South America].]

The map is of interest as the sole instance in which North America is called a part of Africa, on the supposition that a continental connection by the south enclosed the “sea toward the sunset.” The insular Yucatan will be observed in the annexed sketch, and what seems to be a misshapen Cuba. The land at the east seems intended for Baccalaos, judging from the latitude and the indication of fir-trees upon it. This map is one of twelve engraved sheets constituting the above-named work, which was published by Johannes Grieninger in 1530. Friess, or Frisius, who was a German mathematician, and had, as we have seen, taken part in the 1522 Ptolemy, says that he drew his information in these maps from original sources; but he does not name these sources, and Dr. Kohl thinks the maps indicate the work of Waldseemüller.

Among the last of the school of geographers who supposed North America to be an archipelago, was Pierro Coppo, who published at Venice in 1528 what has become a very rare _Portolano delli lochi maritimi ed isole der mar_.[447]