In Places Where There Always Used To Be Horrible Tempests, We Found Most Invincible Calms, Which Were Very Troublesome To

Our ships, which being of the greatest size cannot go without good winds; insomuch that when it is almost an

Intolerable tempest for other ships, making them furl all their sails, those large ships display their sails to the wind and sail excellent well, unless the waves be too furious, which seldom happened in our voyage. You must understand that, when once past the line, they cannot go direct for the Cape the nearest way, but, according to the wind, must hold on as near south as they can till in the latitude of the Cape, which is 35 deg. 30' S. They then shape their course to the east, and so get round the Cape. But the wind so served us at 33 degrees, that we directed our course thence for the Cape.

[Footnote 399: Otherwise called, by the English sailors, a Portuguese man-of-war. - E.]

[Footnote 400: The Cape of Good Hope must be here meant. - E.]

You know that it is hard to sail from east to west, or the contrary, because there is no fixed point in all the sky by which they can direct their course, wherefore I shall tell you what help God hath provided to direct them. There is not a fowl that appeareth, neither any sign in the air or in the sea, that have not been written down by those who have formerly made these voyages; so that partly by their own experience, judging what space the ship was able to make with such and such a wind, and partly by the experience of others recorded in the books of navigations which they have, they guess whereabouts they may be in regard to longitude, for they are always sure as to latitude. But the greatest and best direction of all is, to mark the variation of the needle or mariners compass; which, in the meridian of the island of St Michael, one of the Azores in the same latitude with Lisbon, points due north, and thence swerveth so much towards the east, that, between the foresaid meridian and the extreme south point of Africa, it varieth three or four of the thirty-two points. Again, having passed a little beyond the cape called _das Agulias_, or of the Needles, it returneth again towards the north; and when it hath attained that, it swerveth again toward the west proportionally, as it did before eastwards.

In regard to the first mentioned signs from fowls: The nearer we came to the coast of Africa, the more kinds and greater number of strange fowls appeared; insomuch that, when we came within not less than thirty leagues, almost 100 miles, and 600 miles as we thought from any other land, as good as 3000 fowls of sundry kinds followed our ship; some of them so great, that, when their wings were opened, they measured seven spans from point to point of their wings, as the sailors said.

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