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BEHEM, MARTIN. 



BEEN, APHARA. 



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derived little advantage from the example of the great men iu the midst 

 of whom he resided. Yet his picture in the Pinakothek at Munich, 

 of the resuscitation of a woman by touching her with the cross, is one 

 of the masterpieces of the old German school. The act takes place 

 in the presence of the empress Helena and a crowd of spectators ; 

 and the picture has the following inscription : ' Crux Christi ab 

 Helena reperitur, a Macario, mortua suscitata, adprobatur. Anno 

 CCXLIII.' Barthel was also an engraver, and, according to Sandrart, 

 assisted Marcantonio in his prints after Raphael. His prints are better 

 drawn than Hans Sebald's, but they are not nearly so numerous : they 

 probably do Dot exceed seventy. Many are from Greek and Roman 

 history and mythology. Sandrart says that some of the prints which 

 bear the name of Marcantonio were executed entirely by Beham. 

 (Sandrart, TeutecheAcademie, itc.; Doppeltnayr, Hiitcrische Nachricht 

 ran den Nilrnbergiachen Kiinttlei-n, <&c. ; Hiisgen, Artiitischea Mayazin, 

 1790; Heineken, Dictionnaire des Artistes, <tc. ; Bartsch, Peintre- 

 Graveur ; Brulliot, Dictionnaire des Monoyrammes, <tc.) 



BEHEM, MARTIN, a celebrated navigator and geographer, was 

 born in the city of Niirnberg about the year 1430. His education 

 was carefully attended to, and he is said to have enjoyed the advantage 

 of being instructed by the learned John Miiller, better known under 

 the Latin name of Regiomontanus. In early life he followed the pro- 

 fession of a merchant, continuing however to cultivate the mathematical 

 and particularly the nautical sciences, which may have become more 

 interesting to him from the circumstance of his having to make several 

 commercial voyages. Being on business at Antwerp in the year 1479, 

 Behem became acquainted with some Flemings who were closely con- 

 nected with the court of Lisbon, and who had formed colonies in the 

 newly-discovered islands of the Azores. At their pressing invitation 

 Martin went to Portugal, where, as a skilful cosmographer and maker 

 of maps, he was well received. He was soon engaged in voyages 

 undertaken with a view to making maritime discoveries. The many 

 controversies and contradictions concerning Behem's life begin at this 

 point, but the earlier of them are easily settled. Cellarius and several 

 other writers say that Behem was the discoverer of the whole group 

 of the Azores, but there is ample evidence to show that at least some 

 of the Azores were seen by Vanderberg, a navigator of Bruges, in 

 1431, when Martin could be little more than a year old ; that Gonsavo 

 Velho Cabral visited and named the island of Santa Maria in 1432 ; 

 and that all the islands were known in 1460, or nineteen years before 

 Behem went to Lisbon, and connected himself as a geographer and 

 explorer with the Portuguese government. Mr. Otto and other authors, 

 again, merely make Behem the discoverer of the island of Fayal; but 

 there is good ground for believing that the only two of the islands 

 unknown even so early as 1 449 (when King Alphonso of Portugal granted 

 a licence to his own uncle, Don Henry, to colonise the Azores), were the 

 comparatively small and distant islands of Corvo and Flores ; and its 

 magnitude and position must of necessity have made Fayal, with the 

 group to which it belongs, known soon after the discovery (in 1432) of 

 St. Mary's and St. Michael's. 



la 1484 Behem was placed as a scientific man on board the fleet of 

 the celebrated navigator Diogo Cam, who was commissioned to prose- 

 cute Portuguese discovery along the west African coasts, which were 

 then only known as far as Cape St. Catherine in 2 30' S. lat. With 

 that distinguished admiral the cosmographer went to Fayal and Pico, 

 and this we believe to be the first time he ever visited the Azores. 

 Thence, after doubling Cape Verde, they examined all the African 

 coast from the river Gambia to the river Zaire, or Congo, the mouth 

 of which lies in 6 S. lat. Continuing their course, they made Cape 

 St. Augustine, and finally reached Cape Cross, or De Padrono, in 22 

 S. lat, which was the limit of their voyage, and no less than 19 30' 

 farther south than any preceding discoverer had ventured. After an 

 absence of nineteen months Bcliem returned to Lisbon, where, in 

 reward for his services, the king (John II.) conferred the honour of 

 knighthood upon him in a public and unusually splendid manner. 



Behem married at Fayal in 1486 the daughter of Job Huertcr, by 

 whom he had a son. He settled in this ialand, and took great pains 

 in colonising and cultivating it. He also busied himself in making 

 charts, and occasionally went from the Azores to Lisbon and to Madeira. 

 In 1492, the year in which Columbus started on the expedition that 

 ended in the discovery of the New World, Martin Behem paid a visit 

 to his native city of Niirnberg, where, in the course of a year's resi- 

 dence, and at the earnest request of big countrymen, he made a terres- 

 trial globe, some traits and guesses in which have, perhaps more than 

 anything else, contributed to an obstinately-maintained theory. When 

 he returned from Germany to Portugal he was employed for a short 

 time in some diplomatic negotiations ; but in 1494, retiring from all 

 public business, Martin repaired to his estates in Fayal, where he lived 

 tranquilly in the bosom of his family, continuing however to keep his 

 attention awake to his old and favourite subject, and to the progress 

 of discovery, which after Columbia's first voyage was carried on more 

 rapidly than ever. In 1506 he was once more at Lisbon, and on the 

 29th <lav of July in the same year, full of years and honours, he died 

 in that city, leaving no works of any kind behind him except the maps 

 and charts he had made, and his globe. 



It is admitted on all bides that Martin Behem ought to be regarded 

 as one of the most learned geographers, and as the very best chart- 

 maker of his age. But these, his real and great merits, have not 



satisfied certain writers, who, moved by the prejudices of country or 

 a love of contradiction and paradox, insist that Behem, and not 

 Columbus, was the discoverer of America. Cellarius and Ricoioli both 

 say that he visited the American continent and the Strait of Magal- 

 haens, but Stuvenius appears to have been the first to give great im- 

 portance to this doctrine ; asserting iu his treatise, ' De vero novi Orbis 

 Inventore,' that Behem had acccurately traced on his globe preserved 

 at Niirnberg the islands of America, and even the Strait of Magalhaens. 

 Professor Tozen combated this assertion as far back as 1761, and for 

 a quarter of a century the theory was laid aside as untenable. Dr. 

 Robertson, in his ' History of America,' took some paius to rescue the 

 fame of Columbus, but the task was then considered almost unneces- 

 sary. In 1786 however Mr. Otto, a diplomatic servant of the French 

 government, but a German by birth, again renewed the nearly-forgotten 

 dispute ; and in a long letter to Dr. Franklin stated his reasons for 

 believing that Martin Behem had visited America before Columbus, 

 and that all Columbus had done after him had been in pursuance of 

 Behem's instructions and advice. 



Mr. Otto does not seem to be aware that such an opinion was ever 

 started before. His letter was published in the second volume of the 

 ' Transaction of the American Philosophical Society, held at Phila- 

 delphia for promoting Useful Knowledge.' After its appearance a 

 variety of writers and compilers of cyclopaedias and biographical dic- 

 tionaries, without looking into the matter, took up Mr. Otto's story as 

 something new and striking, not knowing that; it was old and had been 

 disproved. In support of hia views, Mr. Otto quotes records or docu- 

 ments preserved iu the archives of Niirnberg ; but these documents, 

 with the exception of one letter said to be written by Behem, are 

 undated; and some of them contradict each other, and are refuted by 

 well-known historical facts. A great deal of pains has been expended 

 in the support, and much more in the refutation, of Mr Otto's theory ; 

 but it may be regarded as now a settled point that Behem has no title 

 whatever to the great discovery claimed for him. We do not think it 

 worth while therefore to go further into the subject. 



Behem's famous globe, though a remarkable performance, was of 

 necessity in those times both defective and erroneous eveu in relation 

 to the old world. It was made up from the authorities of Ptolemy, 

 Pliny, and Strabo, and still more from the travels of Marco Polo and 

 the semi-fabulous travels of Sir John Mandeville. From this globe it 

 appears that his geographical information in the east did not extend 

 .beyond Japan, nor in the west beyond the Cape Verde Islands ; and 

 that all that he had dotted down on his globe beyond those islands 

 was from mere conjecture. Of two islands which he set down between 

 the Cape Verde group and America, neither exists in the place assigned 

 to it. One was called St. Brandon, the other Antilia ; and from the 

 similarity of the latter name it has been supposed to be one of the 

 Antilles or American islands discovered by Columbus. But Columbus 

 only gave the name of a fabulous island to a real one ; for, long before 

 his time, the denomination of Antilia or Antilia had been assigned to 

 a supposed country somewhere westward of the Azotes. Andrea 

 Bianco, a Venetian geographer who lived at the beginning of the 15th 

 century, indulged precisely in the same speculation. Among a collec- 

 tion of his charts bearing the date of 1436 (that is, fifty-six years 

 before Martin Behem made his globe), there is one in which he lays 

 down a very large island at a great distance to the west of the Azores, 

 and which he calls Antilia, and marks the beginning of another island 

 which he calls La Man di Satauasso, or ' the Devil's Hand.' 



BEHN, APHARA, sometimes spelt APHRA, and AFRA, a dramatist 

 and miscellaneous writer, was of a good family in the city of Canter- 

 bury : she was born in the reign of Charles I., but in what year has 

 not been ascertained. Her father, whose name was Johnson, was 

 related to the Lords Willoughby, and by means of his connection 

 obtained the post of lieutenant-general of Surinam, and its depen- 

 dencies; for which place he accordingly sailed with his daughter (then 

 very young), but died on the passage. Aphara however continued the 

 voyage ; and appears to have resided at Surinam for some length of 

 time, though under what circumstances is not known. She there 

 became acquainted with the famous slave Oroonoko, whom she repre- 

 sents to have been a prince among his own countrymen, and a man of 

 an heroic cast of character, and who afterwards became the subject of 

 a novel from her pen, and of a tragedy, better known, by her friend 

 Southern. After her return to England she married Mr. Behn, a 

 merchant of Dutch extraction ; and appears to have been personally 

 introduced to Charles II., who was so much pleased with her account 

 of Surinam, and probably with the freedom and vivacity of her 

 manners, that he is said to have thought her a proper person to be 

 intrusted with the management of some affairs during the Dutch war, 

 which occasioned her going into Flanders, and residing at Antwerp. 

 It is supposed that by this time her husband was dead. Mrs. Behn 

 succeeded in discovering the intention of the Dutch to sail up the 

 Thames and Medway ; but the court of Charles, with its usual levity, 

 giving no credit to the report of its fair envoy, she is said to have 

 renounced all further politics, out of mortification, and to have devoted 

 the rest of her stay in Holland to amusement. She set out shortly 

 afterwards on her return to England, narrowly escaped death (for the 

 vessel foundered in sight of land, and the passengers were saved iu 

 boats), and became for the rest of her life an authoress by profession, 

 and a woman of gallantry. She wrote seventeen plays, besides poems, 



