The ideas of European geographers in the period just
preceding the discovery of America are represented on a map, or rather a globe,
which dates from 1492 A.D. It was made by a German navigator, Martin Behaim,
for his native city of Nuremberg, where it is still preserved. Behaim shows the
mythical island of St. Brandan, lying in mid-ocean, and beyond it Japan
(Cipango) and the East Indies. It is clear that he greatly underestimated the
distance westward between Europe and Asia. The error was natural enough, for Ptolemy
had reckoned the earth's circumference to be about one-sixth less than it is,
and Marco Polo had given an exaggerated idea of the distance to which Asia
extended on the east. When Columbus set out on his voyage, he firmly believed
that a journey of four thousand miles would bring him to Cipango.
COLUMBUS, 1446(?)-1506 A.D.
Christopher Columbus was a native of Genoa, where his
father followed the humble trade of a weaver. He seems to have obtained some
knowledge of astronomy and geography as a student in the university of Pavia,
but at an early age he became a sailor. Columbus knew the Mediterranean by
heart; he once went to the Guinea coast; and he may have visited Iceland. He
settled at Lisbon as a map-maker and married a daughter of one of Prince
Henry's sea-captains. As Columbus pored over his maps and charts and talked
with seamen about their voyages, the idea came to him that much of the world
remained undiscovered and that the distant East could be reached by a shorter
route than that which led around Africa.
