MARTIN BEHAIM.
This cut follows the engravings in Ghillany’s Behaim, and in Ruge’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 105.
Eratosthenes, accepting the spherical theory, had advanced the identical notion which nearly seventeen hundred years later impelled Columbus to his voyage. He held the known world to span one third of the circuit of the globe, as Strabo did at a later day, leaving an unknown two thirds of sea; and “if it were not that the vast extent of the Atlantic Sea rendered it impossible, one might even sail from the coast of Spain to that of India along the same parallel.”[400]
Behaim had spent much of his life in Lisbon and the Azores, and was a friend of Columbus. He had visited Nuremberg, probably on some family matters arising out of the death of his mother in 1487. While in this his native town, he gratified some of his townspeople by embodying in a globe the geographical views which prevailed in the maritime countries; and the globe was finished before Columbus had yet accomplished his voyage. The next year (1493) Behaim returned to Portugal; and after having been sent to the Low Countries on a diplomatic mission, he was captured by English cruisers and carried to England. Escaping finally, and reaching the Continent, he passes from our view in 1494, and is scarcely heard of again.
SECTION OF BEHAIM’S GLOBE.
This globe is made of papier-maché, covered with gypsum, and over this a parchment surface received the drawing; it is twenty inches in diameter. It having fallen into decay, the Behaim family in Nuremberg caused it to be repaired in 1825. In 1847 a copy was made of it for the Dépôt Géographique (National Library) at Paris; the original is now in the city hall at Nuremberg. The earliest known engraving of it is in J. G. Doppelmayr’s Historische Nachricht von den nürnbergischen Mathematikern und Künstlern (1730), which preserved some names that have since become illegible (Stevens, Historical Collection, vol. i. no. 1,396). Other representations are given in Jomard’s Monuments de la géographie; Ghillany’s Martin Behaim (1853) and his Erdglobus des Behaim und der des Schöner (1842); C. G. von Murr’s Diplomatische Geschichte des Ritters Behaim (1778, and later editions and translations); Cladera’s Investigaciones (1794); Amoretti’s translation of Pigafetta’s Voyage de Magellan (Paris, 1801); Lelewel’s Moyen-âge (pl. 40; also see vol. ii. p. 131, and Epilogue, p. 184); Saint-Martin’s Atlas; Santarem’s Atlas, pl. 61; the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xviii.; Kohl’s Discovery of Maine; Irving’s Columbus (some editions); Gay’s Popular History of the United States, i. 103; Barnes’ Popular History of the United States; Harpers’ Monthly, vol. xlii.; H. H. Bancroft’s Central America, i. 93. Ruge, in his Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 230, reproduces the colored fac-simile in Ghillany, and shows additionally upon it the outline of America in its proper place. The sketch in the text follows this representation. Cf. papers on Behaim and his globe (besides those accompanying the engravings above indicated) in the Journal of the American Geographical Society (1872), iv. 432, by the Rev. Mytton Maury; in the publications of the Maryland Historical Society by Robert Dodge and John G. Morris; in the Jahresbericht des Vereins für Erdkunde (Dresden, 1866), p. 59. Peschel, in his Zeitalter der Entdeckungen (1858), p. 90, and in the new edition edited by Ruge, has a lower opinion of Behaim than is usually taken.
Of Columbus’ maps it is probable that nothing has come down to us from his own hand.[401] Humboldt would fain believe that the group of islands studding a gulf which appears on a coat-of-arms granted Columbus in May, 1493, has some interest as the earliest of all cartographical records of the New World; but the early drawings of the arms are by no means constant in the kind of grouping which is given to these islands.[402] Queen Isabella, writing to the Admiral, Sept. 5, 1493, asks to see the marine chart which he had made; and Columbus sent such a map with a letter.[403] We have various other references to copies of this or similar charts of Columbus. Ojeda used such a one in following Columbus’ route,[404] as he testified in the famous suit against the heirs of Columbus. Bernardo de Ibarra, in the same cause, said that he had seen the Admiral’s chart, and that he had heard of copies of it being used by Ojeda, and by some others.[405] It is known that about 1498 Columbus gave one of his charts to the Pope, and one to René of Lorraine. Angelo Trivigiano, secretary of the Venetian Ambassador to Spain, in a letter dated Aug. 21, 1501, addressed to Dominico Malipiero, speaks of a map of the new discoveries which Columbus had.[406]
