THE SUCCESSORS OF MARCO POLO 



57 



still further on, in a position which suggests to Mr. Colling- 

 ridge some knowledge of the coast of Western Australia, 

 is de Conti's Ceylon, in spite of the fact that the real Ceylon, 

 under the name of Taprobane, is still in the same place 

 and in the same mis-shapen condition in which Ptolemy 

 had left it thirteen hundred years ago ! It is surely clear 

 that the map-maker had no knowledge whatever of the 

 Australian coast. He is simply trying desperately to 



MAP OF 1489. (From Nordenskiold's Periplus.) 

 i. Catigara. 2. S. Thome. 3. Regnum Cayln (Ceylon). 



make some sort of compromise or reconciliation between 

 the well-nigh infallible map of the classical geographer and 

 the extraordinarily misunderstood statements of the recent 

 travellers in India. 



The other maps of the end of the fifteenth century and Behaim's 

 the beginning of the sixteenth give further examples of the map> I492- 

 same effort to reconcile ancient cosmography with modern 

 narratives of travel. Thus Martin Behaim in 1492 made a 

 famous globe, 1 which bears the inscription that " the whole 

 was borrowed with great care from the works of Ptolemy, 

 Pliny, Strabo, and Marco Polo " ! As in the map of 1489, 

 Ptolemy's southern Terra Incognita is shattered to pieces. 



1 See map, p. 55. 



