This
treasure has disappeared, but it was said by men of Henry's day and
aftertime, who saw it in the monastery of Alcobaca, to show "as much or
more discovered in time past than now." If their account is even an
approach to the truth, it was in itself proof sufficient of the
supremacy and almost monopoly of Italians in geographical theory.
With 1375 and the Catalan map of that year, which specially refers to
the Catalan voyage of 1346 and may be taken as one result of the same,
we come to Spanish parallels; but until the death of Henry in 1460,
Italian draughtsmen were in possession, and Fra Mauro's great map of
1459, the evidence and result, in great measure, of the Navigator's
work, could only be drawn by Venetians for the men whose discoveries it
recorded.
But there is one other point in Italian map-science which is worth
remembering. At a time when most schemes of the world were covered with
monsters and legends, when cartography was half mythical and half
miscalculated, the coasting voyagers of the Mediterranean had brought
their _Portolani_ or sea charts to a very different result. And how was
this? Did they get right, as it were, by chance? "They never had for
their object," says the great Swedish explorer and draughtsman, Baron
Nordenskjold, "to illustrate the ideas of some classical author, of some
learned prelate, or the legends and dreams of feats of Chivalry within
the Court circle of some more or less lettered feudal lord.
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