PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR

Turin Map of the eleventh, and the Spanish map of the
twelfth (1109), represent very crude and simple types
of sketches of the world, in which within a square or
oblong surrounded by the ocean a few prominent
features only, such as the main divisions of countries,
are attempted. The Anglo-Saxon example, though
greatly superior to the others given here, essentially
belongs to this kind of work, where some little truth is
preserved by a happy ignorance of the travellers' tales
that came into fashion later, but where there is only the
vaguest and most general knowledge of geographical
facts.
On the other hand, in the next group, to which the
Psalter map is allied, and in which the Hereford map is
our best example, mythical learning—drawn from
books like Pliny, Solinus, St. Isidore, and Martianus
Capella, which collected stories of beasts and monsters,
stones and men, divine, human, and natural marvels on
the principle Credo quia impossible—has overpowered
every other consideration, and a map of the world
becomes a great picture-book of curious objects, in
which the very central and primary interest of
geography is lost. But by the side of and almost at the
same time as these specimens of geographical
mythology, geographical science had taken a new start
in the coast charts or portolani of Balearic and Italian
seamen, some specimens of which form our next set of
maps.
Dulcert's portolano of 1339 and the Laurentian of 1351
are two of the best examples of this kind of work, which
gave us our first really accurate map of any part of the
globe, but which for some time was entirely confined to
coast drawing, and was meant to supply the practical
wants of captains, pilots, and seamen. The Catalan atlas
of 1375-6 shows the portolano type extended to a real
Mappa Mundi; the elaborate carefulness and