Geschichte der geographischen Entdeckungsreisen im Alterthum und Mittelalter

Abstract

THIS is a volume in the publisher's Illustrated Library of Geography and Ethnology. It is, as its title indicates, a History of Geographical Discovery in Antiquity and during the Middle Ages. The story is brought down to the time of Magellan and Martin Behaim. The first book, under the heading of Night and Morning, treats of the earliest dawn of geographical knowledge with the Hebrews, Egyptians, Babylonians, Phrenicians, Greeks, and Romans; the second book embraces the period from Herodotus to Ptolemy; the third, the Middle Ages; and the fourth the Century of Discovery, in which Spain and Portugal did such splendid work. Herr Löwenberg has evidently taken great pains to master his subject, and has been quite successful. He treats it in considerable detail, both in its historical and scientific aspects; the arrangement is excellent, and while popular and attractive in style, the work seems to us to be accurate and altogether trustworthy. There are numerous illustrations, some of them rather fanciful, but most of them useful and appropriate—portraits, ships of various periods, maps, some of them reproductions of very early ones, and places and monuments illustrative of various countries. Altogether the work is a really good specimen of its kind. Another volume will bring the story down to the present time.

Geschichte der geographischen Entdeckungsreisen im Alterthum und Mittelalter.

Von J. Löwenberg. (Leipzig und Berlin: Otto Spamer, 1881.)