voyage to the Congo. On his return to Lisbon he was knighted,
and presently went to live on the island of Fayal, of which his
wife's father was governor. He was a friend of Columbus. Toward
1492 he visited Nuremberg, to look after some family affairs,
and while there "he gratified some of his townspeople by
embodying in a globe the geographical views which prevailed in
the maritime countries; and the globe was finished before
Columbus had yet accomplished his voyage. The next year (1493)
Behaim returned to Portugal; and after having been sent to the
Low Countries on a diplomatic mission, he was captured by
English cruisers and carried to England. Escaping finally, and
reaching the Continent, he passes from our view in 1494, and is
scarcely heard of again." (Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, ii.
104.) He died in May, 1506. A ridiculous story that he
anticipated Columbus in the discovery of America originated in
the misunderstanding of an interpolated passage in the Latin
text of Schedel's _Registrum_, Nuremberg, 1498, p. 290 (the
so-called _Nuremberg Chronicle_). See Winsor, _op. cit._ ii.
34; Major's _Prince Henry_, p. 326; Humboldt, _Examen
critique_, tom. i.p. 256; Murr, _Diplomatische Geschichte des
Ritters Behaim_, Nuremberg, 1778; Cladera, _Investigaciones
historicas_, Madrid, 1794; Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana
Vetustissima_, pp. 37-43.--The globe made by Behaim may now be
seen in the city hall at Nuremberg. It "is made of
_papier-mache_, covered with gypsum, and over this a parchment
surface received the drawing; it is twenty inches in diameter."
(Winsor, _op. cit._ ii. 105.) The portion west of the 330th
meridian is evidently copied from Toscanelli's map. I give
below (p. 429) a sketch (from Winsor, after Ruge's _Geschichte
des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 230) of Behaim's ocean,
with the outline of the American continent superimposed in the
proper place.]

[Sidenote: Columbus starts for Japan, Sept. 6, 1492.]

At length, on the 6th of September, they set sail from Gomera, but were
becalmed and had made only thirty miles by the night of the 8th. The
breeze then freshened, and when next day the shores of Ferro, the last
of the