It may be said that if a traveller’s results did immediately come to be quoted as authoritative, it was in a measure accidental. We have already mentioned the use of the results of Rubruquis by his brother Franciscan, Roger Bacon; but Marco Polo’s results, for example, do not appear to have had any influence on cartography for about half-a-century. An excellent example of mediæval cartography, before these results and others like them began to show their influence on maps, is provided by the celebrated map preserved in Hereford Cathedral, made about 1280 by Richard of Haldingham. Here is the world still shown as a round disk, with little conception of the form of the Mediterranean and its branch seas; while even the British Isles and north-west Europe are strangely distorted to fit the circle. Such is an illustration of the conception of the world still existing in western Europe. Few maps of special areas survive from this period, but that of Great Britain accompanying the work of the famous historical writer Matthew Paris (1259) is an example. It reveals, on the whole, a better idea of the internal features of the land than of its coasts and its shape, which somewhat resembles a fool’s-cap. There are also local maps of Palestine; and that country, it may be added here, is the subject of the earliest extant Christian map, in the form of a mosaic on the floor of a church in Madaba, in Syria: it dates from the sixth century. The Crusades would naturally give rise to a demand for maps of Palestine, and they also gave rise to a class of work which may be compared to the modern guide-book. [Illustration: Fig. 8.--Chart of the Mediterranean, 1500, by Juan de la Cosa.]