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408 some danger. When the map of Europe appeared in 1554, with Ptolemy's errors corrected and the continent shown in something like its real extent and proportions, the learned of all countries, according to Ghymmius, pronounced such extravagant eulogies upon it that one might have thought that no such perfect work had ever before seen the light. A single copy of his great "Mappa Monde" exists in the Bibliothèque Impériale of Paris. It is two metres by one metre thirty-two centimetres, or about six feet and a half by four feet, in dimensions, and shows the world from 80° north to 66° 30′ south. It includes three continents or land-masses—the Old World, America, and a southern continent, which Mercator conceived to be necessary to the balancing of the globe, but which had not yet been found, and which is only imperfectly represented by Australia and the larger islands and the south polar lands. The regions around the pole could not be given, on account of the exaggeration of the degrees on the plane projection, so a special supplementary map was provided for them. As not much was known about these regions, not much could be shown, and the little that could be, with no great accuracy. Behring Strait had not yet assumed definite form in the minds of geographers, but Mercator, thinking there ought to be some such body in that region, marked one on the map. In the main map also, some curious features were marked in the islands of the ocean, on the word of travelers, that have not yet been verified.

The "Atlas" was published in 1595, although several of the maps had already been published separately, that of France in 1585, and the map of Europe in 1572. Larger and smaller forms of the work were published in Latin, French, German, Flemish, and Turkish, in at least fifty editions. The more important editions were published by Hondius, at Amsterdam. That of 1623 had one hundred and fifty-six maps, and the edition of 1630 was prefaced by a biography of Mercator, by Gautier Ghymm (Ghymmius). This work included accounts of the political and the physical geography of the countries described.

To the uniform edition of his maps, Mercator prefixed an essay, "De creatione ac fabrica mundi" ("Concerning the Creation and Structure of the World"), the theological doctrines of which excited some question. But Van Raemdonck, his admiring biographer, says of it: "We have hardly been able to disengage ourself from the reading of it, so much does it attach, lead on, and transport us. In turning over those noble and pious pages, we might have thought we were reading a sacred canticle, a real hymn to the Lord. Invocation of divinity, holiness of purpose, grandeur of conceptions and ideas, sublime style, and enthusiasm—all are there and help to make us believe, with Dr. Solenander, that Mercator speaks in this book as an inspired prophet, as one who has been initiated by God himself into the mystery of the origin of the world."