Besides,
The Similarity Of Words Is Too Trivial A Circumstance On Which To
Establish A Foundation For A Superstructure Of Such Importance.
The best
informed and most judicious historians affirm, that Ophir was in the East
Indies:
For, if it had been in Peru, Solomons fleet must necessarily have
run past the whole of the East Indies and China, and across the immense
Pacific ocean, before it could reach the western shore of the new world;
which is quite impossible. Nothing can be more certain than that the fleet
of Solomon went down the Red Sea; and as the ancients were not acquainted
with those arts of navigation which are now used, they could not launch
out into the ocean to navigate so far from land; neither could those
distant regions be attained to by a land journey. Besides, we are told
that they carried from Ophir peacocks and ivory, articles that are not to
be found in the new world. It is therefore believed that it was the island
of Taprobana, from whence all those valuable commodities were carried to
Jerusalem; and the ancients may have very justly called their discovery
the new world, to express its vast extent, because it contained as much
land as was before known, and also because its productions differed so
much from those of our parts of the earth, or the old world. This
explanation agrees with the expressions of Seneca and St Jerome.
[1] Churchills Collection, V. 591. All that has been attempted in the
present article is to soften the asperity of the language, and to
illustrate the text by a few notes where these seemed necessary. - E.
[2] Trapobana, or rather Taprobana, is assuredly Ceylon, not Sumatra. - E.
SECTION II.
Of the Motives which led Columbus to believe that there were unknown
Countries.
The admiral Christopher Columbus had many reasons for being of opinion
that there were new lands which might be discovered. Being a great
cosmographer, and well skilled in navigation, he considered that the
heavens were circular, moving round the earth, which in conjunction with
the sea, constitute a globe of two elements, and that all the land that
was then known could not comprise the whole earth, but that a great part
must have still remained undiscovered. The measure of the circumference of
the earth being 360 degrees, or 6300 leagues, allowing 17 leagues to the
degree, must be all inhabited, since God hath not created it to lie waste.
Although many have questioned whether there were land or water about the
poles, still it seemed requisite that the earth should bear the same
proportion to the water towards the antarctic pole, which it was known to
have at the arctic. He concluded likewise that all the five zones of the
earth were inhabited, of which opinion he was the more firmly persuaded
after he had sailed into 75 degrees of north latitude. He also concluded
that, as the Portuguese had sailed to the southwards, the same might be
done to the westwards, where in all reason land ought to be found:
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