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Baron Nordenskiold has since enjoyed a well-earned leisure from his arduous labours in the north by studying and publishing the history of early cartography, on which he has issued two valuable atlases, containing fac-similes of the maps and charts of the Middle Ages.
Student of cartography and professional map-maker, expert sailor himself, who had probably been to the Gold Coast, associating with captains and sailors in this seaport town of Lisbon, Columbus must have picked up all the common sailors' gossip of the age, and all the best-known scientific speculation.
"The first day of my arrival at the cloister I was assigned to Dom Granger, and placed by him at work on the Atlas of Christianity. A brief examination decided him as to what kind of service I was best fitted to render. This is how I came to enter the studio devoted to the cartography of Northern Africa.
With the confidence and added belief in himself that the recognition and encouragement of those kind women brought him, Columbus's mind and imagination expanded; and I think it was probably now that he began to wonder if all his knowledge and seamanship, his quite useful smattering of cartography and cosmography, his real love of adventure, and all his dreams and speculations concerning the unknown and uncharted seas, could not be turned to some practical account.
As to the results of this expedition it is difficult to express an opinion. Certain it is that Wilkes Land has subsequently been sailed over in many places by several expeditions. Of what may have been the cause of this inaccurate cartography it is impossible to form any opinion. It appears, however, from the account of the whole voyage, that the undertaking was seriously conducted.
The whole theory of the early influence of the Verrazzano discovery, or of the Verrazano map, upon the cartography of the period to which they relate, and its consequently proving their authenticity, as advanced by some learned writers, is therefore incorrect and is founded in a misconception of fact.
There is a common belief that the first landing place is settled by one or another of the authors cited here. Nevertheless, I trust to have shown, paragraph by paragraph, wherein their several tracks are contrary to the journal, inconsistent with the true cartography of the neighborhood, and to the discredit, measurably, both of Columbus and of Las Casas.
This Bartholomew, of whom we shall see a good deal in the future, is merely an outline at this stage of the story; an outline that will later be filled up with human features and fitted with a human character; at present he is but a brother of Christopher, with a rather bookish taste, a better knowledge of cartography than Christopher possessed, and some little experience of the book-selling trade.
They are indeed a valuable contribution to the study of the perversions of religious faith that most alluring and yet least explored section of psychology. A librarian at the British Museum showed me some years ago one of the most suggestive documents that the art of cartography has ever produced.
This Bartholomew, of whom we shall see a good deal in the future, is merely an outline at this stage of the story; an outline that will later be filled up with human features and fitted with a human character; at present he is but a brother of Christopher, with a rather bookish taste, a better knowledge of cartography than Christopher possessed, and some little experience of the book-selling trade.
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