LENGTH OF A DEGREE 23 



many errors did occur. As a result geographers em- 

 bodying in their maps the information which came 

 to them differed greatly in their latitudes of places. 



There seem to be four well-defined stages in the 

 e\^olution of the maps of Africa as regards the posi- 

 tion in which they place the equator in relation to 

 the coast of Upper Guinea, i.e. the coast limiting 

 the Gulf of Guinea on the north. 



Ptolemy (1490)=^' had represented the equator as 

 crossing Africa 10 degrees south of the Canaries and 

 indicated no such feature as the Gulf of Guinea. A 

 relationship exists betw^een the Ptolemy conception 

 and that in the maps of Waldseemiiller (1507),^^ 

 Glareanus (1510),^^ Petrus Apianus (1520),'^° and the 

 Honterus (1542).-^^ The last three are derived from 

 the Waldseemiiller map, and all four represent the 

 equator as crossing Africa about 10 degrees north of 

 the Upper Guinea coast. The Catalan world map 

 of 1450 also, if a legend off Cape Verde is correctly 

 interpreted'^- to read "This cape is the end of the 

 land. . . . This line is on the equinox . . .," repre- 

 sents the equator crossing well north of a gulf which 

 may correspond to the Gulf of Guinea. 



37 Nordenskiold, Facsimile- Adas, PI. i (our Fig. 3). 



38 Joseph Fischer and F. R. von Wieser: The Oldest Map With the 

 Name America of the Year 1507 and the Carta Marina of the Year 15 16 

 by M. Waldseemiiller (Ilacomilus), text in English and German and 

 facsimile of both maps, Innsbruck, 1903. 



39 Nordenskiold, Periplus, p. 173. 



*o Nordenskiold, Facsimile-Atlas. PI. 38. 



<i Nordenskiold, Periplus. p. 149. 



<■- Kretschmer, Die Katalanische Wcltkarte, pp. 103-104. 



