[Illustration: MARTIN BEHAIM. This cut follows the engravings in Ghillany’s _Behaim_, and in Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 105.] Eratosthenes, accepting the spherical theory, had advanced the identical notion which nearly seventeen hundred years later impelled Columbus to his voyage. He held the known world to span one third of the circuit of the globe, as Strabo did at a later day, leaving an unknown two thirds of sea; and “if it were not that the vast extent of the Atlantic Sea rendered it impossible, one might even sail from the coast of Spain to that of India along the same parallel.”[400] Behaim had spent much of his life in Lisbon and the Azores, and was a friend of Columbus. He had visited Nuremberg, probably on some family matters arising out of the death of his mother in 1487. While in this his native town, 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. [Illustration: SECTION OF BEHAIM’S GLOBE. This globe is made of papier-maché, covered with gypsum, and over this a parchment surface received the drawing; it is twenty inches in diameter. It having fallen into decay, the Behaim family in Nuremberg caused it to be repaired in 1825. In 1847 a copy was made of it for the Dépôt Géographique (National Library) at Paris; the original is now in the city hall at Nuremberg. The earliest known engraving of it is in J. G. Doppelmayr’s _Historische Nachricht von den nürnbergischen Mathematikern und Künstlern_ (1730), which preserved some names that have since become illegible (Stevens, _Historical Collection_, vol. i. no. 1,396). Other representations are given in Jomard’s _Monuments de la géographie_; Ghillany’s _Martin Behaim_ (1853) and his _Erdglobus des Behaim und der des Schöner_ (1842); C. G. von Murr’s _Diplomatische Geschichte des Ritters Behaim_ (1778, and later editions and translations); Cladera’s _Investigaciones_ (1794); Amoretti’s translation of Pigafetta’s _Voyage de Magellan_ (Paris, 1801); Lelewel’s _Moyen-âge_ (pl. 40; also see vol. ii. p. 131, and _Epilogue_, p. 184); Saint-Martin’s _Atlas_; Santarem’s _Atlas_, pl. 61; the _Journal_ of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xviii.; Kohl’s _Discovery of Maine_; Irving’s _Columbus_ (some editions); Gay’s _Popular History of the United States_, i. 103; Barnes’ _Popular History of the United States_; _Harpers’ Monthly_, vol. xlii.; H. H. Bancroft’s _Central America_, i. 93. Ruge, in his _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 230, reproduces the colored fac-simile