This Intelligence Dismayed My People, Who Refused To Proceed
In The Enterprize, And Demanded To Go Back To Marseilles For Another Ship
And More Men.
Finding that it was impossible to go on against their
inclinations, without a stratagem, I pretended to yield to their desires;
but having altered the card of the ships compass, I set sail when it was
late, under pretence of making for Marseilles.
But next morning at
day-break, when all on board believed we had been sailing for Marseilles,
we found ourselves close in with Cape Carthagena[3]."
In a memorandum or observation tending to prove that all the five zones
are habitable by the experience of navigation, he thus writes: "In
February 1467, I sailed an hundred leagues beyond Thule, or Iceland, the
northern part of which is 73 degrees distant from the equinoctial, and not
63 degrees as some suppose; neither does it lie upon the line where
Ptolemy begins the West, but considerably more to the westwards. To this
island, which is as large as England, the English carry on trade,
especially from the port of Bristol. When I was there the sea was not
frozen, but the tides were so great that in some places it rose and fell
twenty-six fathoms[4]. I have likewise been in the Portuguese fort of St
George del Mina, under the equinoctial, and can witness that it is not
uninhabitable, as some have supposed." In his book respecting his first
voyage, he says that he saw some mermaids on the coast of Menegueta, but
that they were not by any means so like ladies as represented in paintings.
In another place he says, that, in several voyages between Lisbon and
Guinea, he had observed that a degree on the earth corresponds to 56 miles
and two thirds. He notices having seen mastick drawn from some trees in
the island of Scio, one of the isles in the Greek Archipelago.
In one place of his own writings he says that he had been at sea during
twenty-three years, without being on shore for any length of time; and had
seen all the countries of the east and west, and towards the north,
particularly England and Guinea; yet had never seen any harbours that
could be compared for goodness with those which he had discovered in the
West Indies. He says farther, "I went first to sea at fourteen years of
age, and have followed that profession ever since." In his note book of
his second voyage he says, "I had two ships, one of which I left at Porto
Sancto, for a certain reason, where it continued one day; and on the day
following, I rejoined it at Lisbon[5]; because I encountered a storm, and
had contrary winds at south-west, and the other ship had contrary winds at
south-east." From these instances it may be inferred that he had great
experience in sea affairs, and that he had visited many countries and
places, before he undertook his great discovery.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 13 of 415
Words from 6528 to 7036
of 219607
