The series of maps which illustrate this account, give the same continuous view of the geographical development of Europe and Christendom down to the end of Prince Henry's age. These are, it is believed, the first English reproductions in any accessible form of several of the great charts of the Middle Ages, and taken together they will give, it is hoped, the best view of Western or Christian map-making before the time of Columbus that is to be found in any English book, outside the great historical atlases.
In the same way the text of this volume, especially in the earlier chapters, tries to supply a want—which is believed to exist—of a connected account from the originals known to us, of the expansion of Europe through geographical enterprise, from the conversion of the Empire to the period of those discoveries which mark most clearly the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World.
The chief authorities have been:
For the Introductory chapter: (1) Reinaud's account of the Arabic geographers and their theories in connection with the Greek, in his edition of Abulfeda, Paris, 1848; (2) Sprenger's Massoudy, 1841; (3) Edrisi, translated by Amédée Jaubert; (4) Ibn-Batuta (abridgment), translated by S. Lee, London, 1829; (5) Abulfeda, edited and translated by Reinaud; (6) Abyrouny's India, specially chapters i., 10-14; xvii., 18-31; (7) texts of Strabo and Ptolemy; (8) Wappäus' Heinrich der Seefahrer, part 1.
I. For Chapter I. (Early Christian Pilgrims): (1) Itinera et Descriptiones Terræ Sanctæ, vols. i. and ii., published by the Société de l'Orient, Latin, Geneva, 1877 and 1885, which give the original texts of nearly all the Palestine Pilgrims' memoirs to the death of Bernard the Wise; (2) the Publications of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society; (3) Thomas Wright's Early Travels in Palestine (Bohn); (4) Avezac's Recueil pour Servir à l'histoire de la géographie; (5) some recent German studies on the early pilgrim records, e.g., Gildemeister on Antoninus of Placentia.
II. For Chapter II. (The Vikings): (1) Snorro Sturleson's Heimskringla or Sagas of the Norse Kings; (2) Dozy's essays; (3) the, possibly spurious, Voyages of the Zeni, with the Journey of Ivan Bardsen, in the Hakluyt Society's Publications.
III. For Chapter III. (The Crusades and Land Travel): (1) Publication of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society; (2) Avezac's edition of the originals in his Recueil pour Sevir à l'histoire de la géographie; (3) Yule's Cathay and the Way Thither; (4) Yule's Marco Polo; (5) Benjamin of Tudela and others in Wright's Early Travels in Palestine; (6) Yule's Friar Jordanus; (7) Sir John Mandeville's Travels.
IV. For Chapter IV. (Maritime Exploration): (1) The Marino Sanuto Map of 1306; (2) the Laurentian Portolano of 1351; (3) The Catalan Map of 1375-6; (4) scattered notices collected in early chapters of R.H. Major's Prince Henry the Navigator; (5) Béthencourt's Conquest of the Canaries (Hakluyt Society, ed., Major); (6) Wappäus' Heinrich der Seefahrer, part 2.
V. For Chapter V. (Geographical Science): (1) Neckam's De Naturis Rerum; (2) the seven chief Mappe-Mondes of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries; (3) the leading Portolani; (4) scattered notices, e.g., from Guyot de Provins' "Bible," Brunetto Latini, Beccadelli of Palermo, collected in early chapters of Major's Henry the Navigator; (5) Wauwerman's Henri le Navigateur.