72 BALCH— EVOLUTION AND MYSTERY 



seeking it, except for the great knowledge of the Captain-general 

 [Magellan], This man, as clever as he was brave, knew that one 

 must pass through a strait very hidden, but which he had seen 

 marked on a map made by Martin Behaim, a most excellent cos- 

 mographer, which the King of Portugal kept in his treasury." The 

 other strange occurrence is that the same year that Magellan sailed 

 through the straits, Johannes Schoner made his famous globe, now 

 in Niiremberg, showing South America much in its real shape, 

 although extending only to 40 degrees south latitude. Pigafetta's 

 statement and Schoner's map are not satisfactorily explained as yet. 

 Perhaps they never will be ! 



One more unexplained cartographical mystery and I have done. 

 Straits under the name of Fretum Anian appear as a water separa- 

 tion between Asia and America on Zaltieri's chart of the year 1566, 

 almost exactly in the position of Bering Straits explored by Vitus 

 Bering in 1728. And from 1566 on they hold their own on charts 

 and atlases, varying their location a little each time until after the 

 year 1700. If one looks at one of these old charts it is hard to 

 believe that some one had not explored Bering Straits before 1566. 

 And yet not only is there no record of any such voyage, but all 

 the evidence which there is goes to show that there was no such 

 voyage.® The only solution of this mystery would seem to be 

 native reports of these straits filtering through to the Chinese and 

 being communicated by them to some early European traveler. But 

 there is no record of anything of the kind. Nevertheless although 

 the known evidence seems to prove that Bering was the first to 

 sail through Bering Straits, the fact remains that more than a cen- 

 tury and a half before Bering, some cartographer appears to have 

 found out that wide straits separated the Asiatic and American 

 continents. 



There are many other unexplained occurrences connected with 

 the evolution of American discovery which are not touched on in 

 this paper. But this paper is not an attempt to give a complete 

 history of the subject. It is rather an attempt to get at the phi- 

 losophy of the matter ; of the causes which led to the discovery ; 



^ F. A. Colder, " Russian Expansion on the Pacific," 1914. 



