CLAUDIUS CLAVUS 



Brittany), and which is inserted in the left-hand margin of the 

 reproduction, p. 236, we shall find the following: just 

 at the spot of which Clavus declares, " Now, the uttermost 

 limit of the land which we know on this side, lies in 70° 10'" ^ 

 the heavy coloring of the land on the Medici map comes 

 to an end judging from the photograph in Ongania, pi. v. 

 Farther to the north extends the coast of the lightly 

 colored mass of land; but just at this point, in 72°, where 

 Clavus has his " ultimus locus uisibilis " (last point visi- 

 ble) 2 this coast-line disappears into the oblique frame which cuts 

 off the upper left-hand corner of the map. The agreement is 

 here so exact and so complete that it would be difficult to find 

 any way out of it. 



Bjornbo and Petersen have asserted that Iceland, on the 

 later map and in the Vienna text, has been given a position 

 more in agreement with the sailing directions than on the 

 Nancy map. I cannot see the necessity for this supposition, 

 as it has almost exactly the same position in relation to the 

 southern point of Greenland and to Norway in both works; 

 the chief difference is merely that the longitude of all three 

 countries is made 3° farther east in the later work (and the 

 latitude of the southern points of Iceland and Greenland is put 

 somewhat farther south), and that the east coast of Green- 

 land has a more oblique north-easterly direction than the cor- 

 responding north-east coast on the Medici map, with the direc- 

 tion of which the Nancy map agrees fairly well. In this way 

 it is brought nearer to Iceland; but that this should be due to 

 a knowledge of the sailing directions seems very uncertain, 

 and is not disclosed, so far as I can see, elsewhere in the later 

 work. The only things I have found which might possibly 



1 Such an inscription as this is quite in the style of Clavus's great prototype, 

 Ptolemy, in whom we often find, " this is the end of the coast of the known 

 land." 



2 It is worth remarking that Clavus puts his last point visible no less than 

 1° 50' (that is, no nautical miles) to the north of the limit of the knovim land. 

 If a statement like this was calculated to be taken as derived from local knowl- 

 edge it would not, in any case, disclose much nautical experience. 



275 



