Christopher Columbus : Chart (1492)
--------------------------------------------
This anonymous mappamundi shows Eastern Africa more accurately than does the Behaim globe. It implies that information is included from Vasco da Gama. It is attributed to Columbus because the marginal notes, in his copy of Cardinal d'Ailly's cosmography show up in this map including one mistake he made in an inscription close to the Red Sea. Columbus and his brother, Bartholomew, were map makers in Seville. I have been unable to find the text written on the map for East Africa.
Marginal Notes in Marco Polo's book
Taken from: Did Marco Polo go to China by Francis Wood.
Marco Polo the merchant mentions the silver mines and fine buckram of Armenia, the crimson silks of Turkey and Tiflis, Georgian oil, Baghdadi pearls, cloth of gold from Tabriz, more silks, pistachios, dates and turquoises from Persia; the cheap partridges of the Persian Gulf; rubies, lapis and sesame oil in Central Asia; cotton, flax and hemp from Kashgar; steel and asbestos cloth from Uighuristan, Tangut musk, the best in the world, salt from the mines of Sichuan, ginger and cinnamon, spikenard, galingale and sugar from Bengale, Javanese pepper, indigo, sandalwood and ambergris from Zanzibar, and fine horses and incense made from a tree near Aden.
It was lists of exotica such as these which appear in the marginal notes Christopher Columbus made in his copy of Marco Polo's book (which he sent to London for in 1498)
