326 The National Geographic Magazine 



of promise. We see on it distinctly the 

 consequences of those errors of Tosca- 

 nelli's chart, which made the Genoese 

 estimate the distance much shorter than 

 it really was, and thus encouraged their 

 daring enterprise. 



MERCATOR 



In the line of map-drawing, Behaim, 

 Regiomontanus, and others undertook 

 a revision of the methods of projection. 

 Gerhard Kaufmann, better known as 

 Mercator, invented a new method spe- 

 cially adapted to the wants of charts of 

 the world, which is still in use and bears 

 his name as the well-known Mercator 

 projection. It was he, too, who after 

 another German, Ortel, or Ortelius, had 

 first united into a volume several maps 

 belonging together, chose for such a 

 collection the name of Atlas. 



NAME AMERICA 



I wonder whether all Americans are 

 aware of the fact that even the name of 

 their continent is due to none but a Ger- 

 man scholar : In 1 507 Martin Waldsee- 

 miiller,alsoknownasHylacomylus,ofSt. 

 Die, in the Vosges, edited a book called 

 Cos7iiographice Introdiidio, in which he 

 gave a translation of Amerigo Vespucci's 

 description of his voyages. That was 

 just the time when Amerigo's fame 

 filled the world, while Columbus' dis- 

 grace overshadowed his merit, and evi- 

 dently his name had never reached the 

 quiet village in the Vosges when Amer- 

 igo trumpeted forth his own glory. So 

 Hylacomylus proposed that, since the 

 new continent was, after all, not a part 

 of the Indies, no name would suit it 

 better than that of his famous explorer, 

 Amerigo. The book was read far and 

 wide, and so quickly was the proposi- 

 tion accepted that, when later on the 

 true discoverer was known, the name 

 was already rooted too deeply in general 

 use to be abolished, and was even ex- 

 tended to the north part of the continent. 



while Hylacomylus had only meant it 

 for Amerigo's special stage, the present 

 South America. 



EARIvY GEOGRAPHIES 



Another Cosmographia appeared in 

 1524, by Apianus (Bennewitz) ; the 

 Weltbuch of Sebastian Frank, in 1534; 

 in 1544 the fine Cosmographia of Sebas- 

 tian Miinster, and Merian's Topogi-aphia 

 added to its descriptions the most beau- 

 tiful engravings, which today still de- 

 light the ej^es of the geographer as well 

 as of the lover of art. 



These works of descriptive character 

 were followed by attempts at rational 

 investigation. After Francis Bacon had 

 first pointed to the relations of discovery' 

 and philosophy, philosophers had never 

 quite lost sight of geography. The ques- 

 tion of effects and causes thus came into 

 it, the distinction of different kinds and 

 classes of phenomena, and their division 

 and subdivision into larger and smaller 

 groups ; the foundation of geographic 

 systems, and with it the germ of the 

 scientific study of geography. Cluve- 

 rius' (Philipp Kluver, of Dantzic) Intro- 

 dudiones in geographiam universani, in 

 1629, was the first attempt in this line. 

 In 1652 followed Varenius' (Bernhard 

 Varen, of Hitzacker-on-the-Elbe) won- 

 derful Geog rap Ilia Geiieralis, in which 

 we find the outlines of almost the whole 

 domain of modern general geography, 

 and in 1678 the learned Jesuit Athana- 

 sius Kircher published his A fundus S7ib- 

 terra7ieus, containing, among others, the 

 first chart of the currents of the Atlantic 

 Ocean, of a correctness which is mar- 

 velous considering the little knowledge 

 of the time about ocean currents. Thus, 

 though not materially connected with 

 the great discoveries and conquests, 

 Germany still held an honorable record 

 among the fellow-nations, for hers was 

 the intellectual and scientific conquest 

 of the world which, when the others de- 

 cayed and fell, remained as vigorous as 

 before. 



