Terrestrial and celestial globes; their history and ... - 24grammata.com

Terrestrial and Celestial Globes.
made use of the best available sources. The New World
follows the Sevillan type, as represented in the Ribeiro
maps, particularly the eastern or Atlantic coast regions,
including, though in somewhat abbreviated form, the references
to Gomez, Ayllon, and Narvaez. There is no distinct
coast line north of California, which line follows the merid-
ian of 105 degrees as far north as the Arctic circle, hence
there is no positive representation of an Asiatic connection,
but rather the indication of a doubt, as was indicated on
maps of the type.
If Santa Cruz intended his peculiar gores to serve in the
construction of a terrestrial globe, we cannot find that he
impressed his method on the globe makers of the period. We
seem to have but one striking imitation of his work, viz., in
the gore map of Florianas, to which reference is made
below.'^
To that striking feature of many of the globe maps of
the second quarter of the sixteenth century, in which an
Asiatic connection of the New World is represented, atten-
tion has been called in the preceding pages; there likewise
has been noted the fact that not a few of the map makers
of the period expressed a certain degree of doubt as to
whether the prevailing idea of the first quarter of the cen-
tury (that the lands discovered in the west constituted a
veritable New World) should be given over, preferring to
omit altogether the west and northwest coast line of North
America, or to make very indefinite allusion to the geography
of the region.
We now come to the consideration of a map and globe
maker who carries us back to the geographical notion of
the earlier years of the century, namely, to the idea that the
New World was nothing less than an independent continent.
The activities of Gerhard Mercator (1512-1594) (Fig. 60)
were epoch making, and a reference to him more detailed
than has been accorded his predecessors is fitting."* He was a
native of Rupelmunde, a small town situated in the Pays
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