Review: Author(s): C. Raymond Beazley Review by: C. Raymond Beazley Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Feb., 1905), pp. 206-207 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1775894 Accessed: 27-06-2016 04:25 UTC

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This content downloaded from 128.163.2.206 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:25:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 206 REVIEWS.

The numerous illustrations, which are reproduced from photographs, are excel- lent. Though they are in most cases printed with the text, the definition is far superior to that of many plates, and wherever the figure of the author appears, however small it may be, the likeness is unmistakable. J. W. E.

GENERAL. HISTORY OF CARTOGnAPI-Y.

'Kartographische Denkmiiler zur Entdeckungsgeschichte von Amerika, Asien, Austra- lien, und Afrika aus dem Besitz der Kiniglichen iffentliellen Bibliothek zu Dresden.' Herausgegeben von Victor Hantzsch und Ludwig Schmidt. ]liersemann. Leipzig: 1903. This series of facsimiles includes seventeen excellent illustrations of the map- work of three prominent sixteenth-century draughtsmen, viz. (1) the chart of the Atlantic Ocean basin, by Pero Fernandez, 1528; (2) the 1541 world map of Nicolas Desliens, in three sheets; (3) the extra-European portions of Diego IJomem's work of 1568, in thirteen sheets. As to Pero Fernandez, it is impossible to decide whether this designer is the same as any of the we!l-known men who bore this name in the great age of Portu- guese history; we only know what he tells us on this map-that he executed the present work at Oporto in 1528. But he may have been the same as the Pero Fernandez who in 1558 was commissioned by the King of (Sebastian) to supply maps and nautical instruments for ships sent to Guinea and India in the service of the state. The original is in MS. Dresd. f. 17; its measurements are 0'88 by 0-64 metre, the height being the larger dimension. The African coast is only shown a little beyond the mouth of the Congo. Great castle pictures mark the fortress of La Mina on the Guinea coast and the capital of the Congo kingdom. As to Desliens and his work, we do not suffer here from the vagueness that clouds Pero Fernandez. Next to Pierre Desceliers, Nicolas of is the leader of that great Norman school of cartography, whose importance was first adequately appreciated by Henry Harrisse; next to the priest of Arques, he is the father of French map-science. The specimens of Desliens here given from the Dresden MS. Geog. A. 52 m. (0-575 metre in height by 1-042 metre in breadth), inscribed faicte a Dieppe par Nicolas Desliens, 1541) are claimed by the present editors as earlier than the so-called Harleian map in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 5413), which the late Mr. Coote endeavoured to assign to 1536, considering it as the oldest surviving production of Dieppese cartography. In any case, its resemblance to the Harleian example is most intimate; slighter, but still beyond dispute is its likeness to the ," Cabot" map of 1514-a distinctly inferior production of the Dieppe school, but of the Dieppe school nevertheless. As to Diego Homem, he is probably a son of that Lopo Homem, " mestre de cartas de marear," who received from King Manual, in recognition of his work, a privilegium, on February 16, 1517. Diego's life is at present scarcely better known than that of Pero Fernandez. In 1543, after committing murder, he seems to have fled from Portugal to , and to have remained in exile (in various European countries) till 1547, when he was pardoned and recalled by John III. (July 11). Much of his later life appears to have been spent in North Italy, where Battista Agnese notices his presence, and praises his work as unusually painstaking and finished. Twenty-one maps of his are known. The present work, executed at Venice in 1568, was formerly in the possession of Count Hein- rich Briihl, and since 1798 has been in the Dresden Royal Library (MS. Dresd.

This content downloaded from 128.163.2.206 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:25:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms REVIEWS. 207 f. 59 a). On the third sheet is the endorsement inscription of the author: Diegas Ilomn Cosmographus Lusitanus fecit Venettis ano a partu Virginis 1568. The works of Pero Fernandez and Diego Homem probably drifted into the possession of the Elector Augustus of Saxony (1553-1586) through the commercial relations cultivated by the latter with Portugal. In 1576 Hieronymus Kramer was sent from Dresden to Lisbon to procure openings for Saxon trade, and in particular to secure direct access to the spice and drug markets controlled by Portugal. Kramer made numerous and valuable purchases for the elector; and in the same way the great Augsburg merchant Konrad Rott, who had temporarily leased from the Portuguese Government the Indian pepper monopoly in Lisbon, and who had met Kramer in Portugal, made himself a commercial and antiquarian agent of the Saxon prince, whose aid he desired in various projects of his own. The map of Pero Fernandez here given seems to have been noticed in the oldest catalogue of the Electoral collections at Dresden (the ' Inventar der Kunst- Kammer,' drawn up in 1587). We know that before his death in 1586, Augustus had acquired thirteen cosmographical and cartographical works, considered even then as valuable; but the only precise indication of such an acquisition in the records of his life is the present of a compass and sea-chart from Duke John the Elder of Schleswig-Holstein, on March 29, 1575. As to the details of the map-work here repreduced, we may notice in the Desliens example (plates 2-4 of the present facsimiles) that, as in the " Harleian " map, Iaua la grande is prominent and distinctly suggests a discovery of certain parts of the north-west of before this date (1541); that the Caspian is quite misconceived, its length being indicated as from west to east; that the whole of Asia east, north, and north-east of the Caspian is obviously unknown to the designer; and that the Don is really his limit on this side of the world. For though an estuary is indicated in that part of the Caspian shoreland which roughly answers to the Volga delta, there is no hint of a great river, and throughout the eastern and central portions of the present Russian empire, Desliens' conceptions are far inferior to those of Herberstein (1517-1526), just as on the Pacific coast of Asia his delineations are decidedly in arrear of the knowledge already acquired by the Portuguese. In the north-east of North America, Desliens' present work has a striking likeness to the " Cabot " map of 1544, which may be fairly supposed to owe a great deal to Nicolas of Dieppe. In the southern parts of Africa and Asia, and along the shore-lands of Africa, the Norman draughtsman furnishes an excellent picture of the most advanced geographical knowledge of his time. C. RAYMOND BEAZLEY.

GEOGRAPHICAL TERMS. 'Dictionary of Geographical and Topographical Terms.' By Alexander Knox, B.A. : Stanford. 1904. Price 15s. Readers of books of foreign travel are constantly confronted with difficulties in regard to the place-names and topographical terms met with, a right understanding of which involves a greater or less knowledge of a host of out-of-the way languages. Mr. Knox's book is an attempt to remove such difficulties, by the definition of the terms most commonly employed throughout the world for geographical and topo- graphical features, as well as of words in frequent occurrence in the composition of such terms or of place-names. Its interest is therefore obvious at first sight, and, though it lays no claim to completeness, and will be of use rather to the general than to the scientific reader, geographers may still be grateful for the amount of persevering labour bestowed on its compilation, which must have involved difficulties of no light order. Especial attention has evidently been

This content downloaded from 128.163.2.206 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:25:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms