232 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



APPENDIX E. 

 The Tanats. 



I am very much afraid that our president underrates, in his address, 

 the extent of general information concerning ancient, and especially 

 mediaeval cartography, because, in fact, that subject has been worked up 

 in many excellent treatises, during the last fifty years. I do not think 

 the attentive reader will be impressed with the ignorance of those who 

 have, for so many yeai'S, been discvissing this question, and I think it 

 will be ver}^ unsafe for any one to count upon them being unfamiliar with 

 anything really important upon the subject. So far as the mediaeval 

 people are concerned, the case is very well put by Humboldt (Ex. Crit., 

 I, 120) : " Le moyen-âge ne vivant que de souvenirs qu'il supposait clas- 

 " siques, et n'ayant foi dans ses propres découvertes qu'autant qu'il croyait 

 " en trouver des indices chez les anciens, a été agité, jusqu'au temps de 

 " Colomb, par tous les rêves cosmographiques des siècles antérieurs." 

 They were in real truth excessively weak in geography, if their maps 

 are the faintest reflex of what they knew, and until Ptolemy was (in 

 1409) translated into Latin their cosmographical notions were extrava- 

 gant and fanciful ; and even afterwards, when the science of the Greeks 

 began to spread, it was only such intellectual giants as Friar Bacon, Car- 

 dinal d'Ailly and Albertus Magnus, few in number, who could apprehend 

 it. The mass of men were of the order of mind which resisted Colum- 

 bus for seventeen years. Still, in the manner of this special controversy 

 there is much that reminds one of the Middle Ages, for the exceedingly 

 strong mode of expressing dissent recalls the trenchant style of Cosmas 

 Indicopleustes when he boiled over with indignation at those perverse 

 ones who persisted in believing the absurd theory that there were anti- 

 podes, and that men could walk with their heads downwards, and that 

 rain could fall upwards. That was indeed "absurd," "senseless," 

 "preposterous," "puerile," "childish," or anything else disagreeable 

 which the outraged common sense of that irritable writer could suggest. 



The real state of geographical knowledge of that period is well ex- 

 pressed by Nordenskiold : "During the next jnillennium after Ptolemy 

 " the art of drawing maps had become almost extinct among learned 

 " men and scholars in Europe. Yet some passages in writings fi'om this 

 " long period may be cited showing that maps, of which a few are still 

 " to be met inserted in old manuscripts, were then in use." He then goes 

 on to show that these maps were similar to the diagram fig. 18. He 

 speaks of a map by Cosmas, which has survived, and of several others as 

 '•' not deserving the name of maps," and says they exercised no more in- 

 fluence on the development of cartography than the wind-heads on the 

 maps of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He continues : " From the 

 " twelfth century the mediaeval maps first become of general interest in 

 " the history of civilization through their greater fullness of detail, though 

 " they were, with the exception of the portolanos, in every respect in- 

 " ferior to the old work of Ptolemy." " Yet their only influence on the 

 " art of map-making was the introduction of the custom prevailing to 

 " the end of the sixteenth century, of adorning maps with drawings of 



