40 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
Catalan 
Chart, 1375. 
The Renaissance 
— Middle or 
FirrtENrn 
Cexttrt. 
, x 1 into the Atlantic; the coasts of Europe as far as Flanders, the British Islands, 
uni th< on ts of Africa as far as Cape Bojador take definite form and are well drawn. 
T tno.'t remarkable of these compass-charts is known as the Catalan chart, now 
pr s.-rved in the National Library of Paris. It is a map of the world in six sheets, 
dat< 1 1375, and is at once a planisphere and a marine chart. The author was a pilot 
.it!* Llind ot Majorca. It indicates, in particular, the new islands discovered in the 
V ntic and the coasts of the Caspian, and shows the greatest progress in the representa- 
tion of the Indian Seas. It is on this Catalan chart that India appears for the first 
•im- as . peninsula, and the Indian Ocean is no longer a Mediterranean as had been 
vi usly represented. The coast of Africa is not limited towards the south, as 
delineated by Ptolemy and the Arabs. 1 
These charts are works of positive geography from their exactness, and they surpass 
in this respect the other like productions of the same time, whether maps of the world, 
planispheres, <>r written descriptions. In spite of their correctness, however, these 
H.rtulani cannot be considered true scientific charts. It may be said that an exact 
knowledge of the coasts of the sea preceded that of the inland portions of the continents 
. . 1 : d large islands. .Almost all peoples in the infancy of their civilisation possess graphic 
< l'i. 'cntations of their coasts, which may be regarded as not differing greatly from those 
; - , .1 by the sailors of the period now under consideration. From the ancient 
Mi xicans, Cortes received charts which enabled the Spanish navigators to find their way 
dong the Mexican coasts; Pany discovered the Strait of Fury and Heela by directing 
his < oin -e according to a chart drawn by an Esquimaux woman; Ross and M‘Clintock, 
like Firry, made use of charts furnished them by the Esquimaux. However, the 
•ompass-charts added greatly to the knowledge of the forms of seas and oceans; the 
element awanting in them is compensated for by the scrupulous correctness 
by which they are distinguished. 
A volution took place through the Renaissance. Learned Greeks arrived in Italy 
.!•• the. capture of Constantinople in 1453, and the introduction of paper permitted 
t h«- -jr eat gr. >gr;i.phical works of antiquity to be popularised. From the end of the fifteenth 
• i : : y phmiapheric representations without graduation were abandoned, and, after a 
ip of it t hoo-aud years, maps were once more constructed on mathematical principles. 
Ti re appearance of Ptolemy’s Geography with its clearly drawn maps produced a 
pr -!" , ml elfect in Western Europe. Nordenskibld 2 says that when this great work was 
! from the expiring Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century it had the effect 
of .n important discovery, which seized on men’s minds at first with even more force 
1 (<r a • r.f these imp-, made by Andrea I’-iancho in 1448, H. Yule Oldham thinks America (the Brazil coast) 
n j ttV.M,lik' all the evidence for pre-Columbian voyages, except the Norse, is extremely unsatisfactory 
( w /W. Jtrnf. Grog. Soc., Nov. 1894). 
Norh-mki 1!, A. K , Facsimile Atlas to the early history of Cartography, with reproductions of the most 
, -c-d i;i the 15th and 16th centuries; translated from the Swedish original by J. A. Ekelbf and 
C. R Mark him, p. 9, Stockholm, 1889. 
