THE GLOBE OF 1513, AND THE PROGRESS OF 

 GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY AND MAP- 

 MAKING FROM THE TIME OF COLUMBUS 

 TO 1600. 



By Geokge Rogers Howell. 

 [Read before the Albany Institute December 16, 1890.] 

 When I proposed to prepare this paper for the Institute I had in 

 mind simply the description of the globe which a few months ago 

 came in to the possession of the Bibliotheque Rationale at Paris, after 

 having been lost to the world for generations in a private library. But 

 the discussion involved so much study of the whole subject of early 

 discovery and map-making of the American continent that I decided 

 that it would be more interesting to men busy all in their several and 

 varied lines of study, if I sketched the gradual growth of the knowl- 

 edge of geography. In approaching this subject, therefore, let us for- 

 get for awhile, if we can, modern geography, and put ourselves back 

 to the knowledge of the earth's surface as it existed in the time of 

 Columbus in the year 1492. Fortunately for us, in that very year a 

 German geographer, and the most distinguished of his time, Martin 

 Behaim by name, constructed a globe twenty-one inches in diameter, in 

 the city of Nuremberg, where it has remained to this day. An inspec- 

 tion of this globe shows that the map-makers of that day had a very in- 

 correct estimate of the magnitude of the earth. Thus, the meridian of 

 longitude on the eastern limit of the hemisphere that includes the 

 Atlantic ocean, passes through the western part of Spain and Africa. 

 The meridian on the western limit of this same hemisphere passes 

 through Asia, leaving a considerable portion of it in the map. Now 

 tins eastern meridian on our modern globes, as it passes over the north 

 Pole and is carried on to the antipodes, really passes through the mid- 

 dle of the Pacific ocean between North America and Asia. We see here 

 at once that the globe of Behaim places Asia where North America 

 reall y belongs. America and the Pacific are blotted out entirely. On 

 the other hand, both then and for at least forty years from this date, Asia 

 spread out enormously east and west to fill up the degrees of the 

 globe. The several groups of the Azores, the Canary, the Madeira 

 and c ^pe Verde Islands are all given, not far from their real location. 



