LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE OF KANSAS CITY. 473 



Our venerable cosmographer, who with Diego Cam, explored the west 

 coast to the Congo River, south of the Equator, could have easily verified, this 

 fact witnessing nightly the diurnal rising and setting of the constellations and 

 planets, with the new glories of the southern cross emerging from the South 

 Polar Ocean. 



Behaim's Globe dates about the year 1490. His African voyage dates 1483 

 and 1484, and he gave in this map the latest and most reHable delineation of the 

 whole known world. The Cape of Good Hope is well shown with its Table 

 mountains. The " Lun^ Montes," or Mountains of the Moon, yet shown in 

 maps forty years ago as a veritable range of mountains in central Africa, appear 

 on the Behaim Globe about 14° south latitude, and from them spring the river 

 systems of south and central Africa. Lake Tschad is correctly given, while the 

 Senegal and Gambia Rivers are shown in pretty accurate form. 



Northern Europe is not very symmetrical, and Lapland is delineated as ex- 

 tending to the North Pole, with a group of islands west of it. Over the whole 

 globe, Behaim indicates where some of the Apostles converted the heathtn, 

 while scattered over it are representations of towns, nations and their habitations. 

 We find in the Eastern Hemisphere the Islands of Madagascar, Zanzibar, and 

 Ceylon, with the Spice and Malacca Islands also, but far from their true positions, 

 while the continent of Asia is delineated as extending south of the Tropic of 

 Capricorn. 



Cipangu (Japan) is many degree east of its true position, with a vast sea ex- 

 tending from that island to the North Pole. 



China and Siberia are very badly shown, and north Siberia is in no manner 

 shown as correctly as in the old Ptolemaic maps. It is laid down as extending 

 to the North Pole also, which, with Lapland, made a circumpolar continent. 



LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE OF KANSAS CITY. 



BY E. A. HICKMAN, INDEPENDENCE, MO. 



What is the exact position of Kansas City in latitude and longitude with re- 

 ference to Washington City and the zero of North Latitude ? 



The rod on the tower of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington City, D. 

 C, stands marked as being North Latitude 38° 53' 16.64", and West Longitude 

 from Greenwich, England, 77° 01' 16.18". 



Kansas City stands, as lately determined by a corps of United States scientists, 

 on the 39th parallel of North Latitude; it passing a few hundred feet south of 

 Independence Avenue, and at its juncture with the State Line it marks that point 

 in the city 17° 35' West Longitude from the point in Washington City. Thus 

 we find that a point on the State Line seven and three-quarter miles south of the 

 one here described in the city, is a point due west of the one first described in 



