At a date not much later, say 1486, it is supposed the Laon globe, dated in 1493, was actually made, or at least it is shown that in some parts the knowledge was rather of the earlier date, and here we have “Grolandia,” a small island off the Norway coast.[754]
CLAUDIUS CLAVUS, 1427.
We have in 1489-90 a type of configuration, which later became prevalent. It is taken from an Insularium illustratum Henrici Martelli Germani, a manuscript preserved in the British Museum, and shows, as seen by the annexed extract, a long narrow peninsula, running southwest from the northern verge of Europe. A sketch of the whole map is given elsewhere.[755]
This seems to have been the prevailing notion of what and where Greenland was at the time of Columbus’ voyage, and it could have carried no significance to his mind that the explorations of the Norse had found the Asiatic main, which he started to discover. How far this notion was departed from by Behaim in his globe of 1492 depends upon the interpretation to be given to a group of islands, northwest of Iceland and northeast of Asia, upon the larger of which he writes among its mountains, “Hi man weise Volker.”[756]
As this sketch of the cartographical development goes on, it will be seen how slow the map-makers were to perceive the real significance of the Norse discoveries, and how reluctant they were to connect them with the discoveries that followed in the train of Columbus, though occasionally there is one who is possessed with a sort of prevision. The Cantino map of 1502[757] does not settle the question, for a point lying northeast of the Portuguese discoveries in the Newfoundland region only seems to be the southern extremity of Greenland. What was apparently a working Portuguese chart of 1503 grasps pretty clearly the relations of Greenland to Labrador.[758]
FRA MAURO, 1459.
Lelewel (pl. 43), in a map made to show the Portuguese views at this time,[759] which he represents by combining and reconciling the Ptolemy maps of 1511 and 1513, still places the “Gronland” peninsula in the northwest of Europe, and if his deductions are correct, the Portuguese had as yet reached no clear conception that the Labrador coasts upon which they fished bore any close propinquity to those which the Norse had colonized. Ruysch, in 1508, made a bold stroke by putting “Gruenlant” down as a peninsula of Northeastern Asia, thus trying to reconcile the discoveries of Columbus with the northern sagas.[760] This view was far from acceptable. Sylvanus, in the Ptolemy of 1511, made “Engroneland” a small protuberance on the north shore of Scandinavia, and east of Iceland, evidently choosing between the two theories instead of accepting both, as was common, in ignorance of their complemental relations.[761] Waldseemüller, in the Ptolemy of 1513, in his “Orbis typus universalis,” reverted to and adopted the delineation of Henricus Martellus in 1490.[762]