[s. E. DAWSON] 



THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 



233 



^' towers and temples, of kings sitting on their thrones in full attire, of 

 " monsters and ethnographic details, and with inscriptions of a doubtful 

 "" geographical character, borrowed from the heathen mythology or 

 " Christian mythology." 



In my first paper I ventured to state that when Soncino said that 

 John Cabot had reached the "region of the Tanais" ho simply meant 

 that Cabot had reached the regions of Asia on its northeastei-n side, and 

 I will now give my reasons for that opinion. In inquiries of this kind it 

 is before all things necessary to put one's self as much as possible in the 

 position of a person living at the period under consideration, and I there- 

 fore now give reproductions of some of the maps current at that time or 

 anterior to it ; and here let me recall the fact that the time in question is 

 previous to A,D. 1497, the date of Soncino's letter. Naturally Soncino 

 could not have been referring to maps published one hundred years 

 later — in A.D. 1G18, for instance. 



Our own Alfred the Great, in his translation of Orosius, gave a sum- 

 mary of geographical opinion which held good until the discovery of 

 America. He wrote : " Our forefathers divided the orb of all this earth, 

 " saith Orosius, which is encircled by the ocean, which is called Garsecq^ 

 *' into three, and named those three parts Asia, and Europe, and Africa, 

 ^' though some men have said that there were only two parts, Asia, and 

 " the other Europe. Asia is bounded to the southward and eastward by 

 " the ocean, and this comprises half of all this earth from the eastern 

 " part. Then on the north part, that is of Asia, and on the right !-ide, 

 " Europe and Asia join together in the River Tanais ; and then from the 

 " same River Tanais south along the Mediterranean, and west of Alex- 

 " andria, Asia and Africa join together." 



To illustrate this idea I give the following cut (fig. 18) from Norden- 

 skiold.^'-" It is from the Orbis Breviarium of Zacharias Lilius, printed 

 in 1493 — a very popular work at that time. This diagram, or something 

 similar, is often found in old manuscripts, and in printed books down to 

 •and beyond the time of Cabot. 



Qrit-ni^ 



pepLëlnol "Tandi % 



Mendie^ 



Occident 

 FiQ. 18.— It must be turned half round to bring the north on top. 



Fig. 19, on next page, is from a Codex of the eleventh century at 

 Leipzic. It will, like most of the raediîcval maps, require to be turned 

 half round to be understood, because our method of drawing maps, with 



