MAPS AND MAP-MAKING BEFORE MERC AT OR. 491 



cartography in Europe in contrast with the little that was done for its 

 improvement by the Arabs, it will be necessary to draw attention to 

 the difference between the nature of the empire which they established 

 and that era of maritime enterprise and commercial activity which 

 sprang up, and after the twelfth century developed so rapidly in the 

 cities of the Mediterranean. The Arabs had a vast empire, the great 

 bulk of which had no connection with the sea. A highly imaginative 

 people, they were more attracted by speculative inquiries respecting 

 the earth as a whole, and therefore studied it more in its connection with 

 astronomy than by those careful, patient, and practical topographical 

 labors which constitute such an important part of geography. What 

 could be done by astronomical observation to show the relative posi- 

 tion of places they did ; but they knew nothing of the Atlantic. 



The people of the maritime cities of the Mediterranean had a field 

 of activity very limited when compared with the great empire of the 

 Arabs. It was the Mediterranean. Their pursuits were maritime. 

 They were the carriers by water of products between Asia and Europe, 

 and therefore became, what the Arabs never were, a nautical people. 

 To them navigation and everything that tended to its improvement 

 were of the highest interest, and they consequently gave great atten- 

 tion to details. They obseiwed closely the outlines of coasts, carefully 

 delineated them, and, as they had an eye for form and proportion, their 

 maps, in design and execution, greatly excelled those of the Arabs. 



These cosmographers knew very well the position of places to the 

 pole, or geographical latitude, but in making their maps they drew no 

 parallels of latitude, and paid less attention to longitude : for the mar- 

 iners for whose use these maps were intended knew nothing about fig- 

 ures representing degrees of latitude and longitude, and they are con- 

 sequently not found upon these maps. The distances on the land or 

 over the sea were laid down from certain fixed points in the direction 

 of the compass, and hence these maps are covered with a network of 

 lines running in all directions from central points, called wind-roses 

 {rose de vent), which, to persons familiar only with maps of the pres- 

 ent day, are unintelligible. 



In the fifteenth century, great acquisitions were made to the knowl- 

 edge of the world, especially in Asia and Africa, by the journeys of 

 Marco Polo and Cadamosto ; and the result of this accumulation of 

 new information was the construction, in 1457, of a large map of the 

 world, by Fra Mauro. It was painted on the wall of a convent in 

 Venice, and was, for its time, an admirable production. 



Fra Carmelite was a friar who had established a geographical 

 school in Venice, and whose acquisitions as a geographer were, for the 

 time, so extensive that he received from his contemporaries the title 

 of '' the incomparable.'''' He knew that the earth is a sphere — being 

 well acquainted with Ptolemy, but did not follow Ptolemy's scientific 

 method of so projecting the world as to give the longitude and latitude 



