OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 293 



tacliiiig a special and well-informed astronomer to every great 

 expedition was so generally felt, that Queen Isabella wrote to 

 Columbus on the oth of September, 1493, " that although ha 

 had shown in his undertakings that he knew more than any 

 other living being {que ninguno de los 7iacidos), she counseled 

 him. nevertheless, to take with him Fray Antonio de Marche- 

 na, as being a learned and skillful astronomer." Columbus 

 writes, in the narrative of his fourth voyage, that " there was 

 only one infalHble method of taking a ship's reckoning, viz., 

 that employed by astronomers. He who understands it ma,y 

 rest satisfied, for that w.hich it yields is like unto a prophetic 

 vision {vision j^^'ofctica.)* Our ignorant pilots, when they 



* The queen writes to Columbus : " Nosotros misraos y no otro algu 

 no, habemos visto algo del libro que nos deJ2istes/' " we ourselves, aud 

 no one else, have seen the book you have sent us" (a journal of his 

 voyage, in which the distinistful navigator had omitted all numerical 

 data (^f degrees of latitude aud of distances) : •' quanto mas en esto plati- 

 camos y vemos, conocemos cuan gran cosa ha seido este negocio vue.s- 

 tro, y que habeis sabido en ello mas que nunca se pensO que pudiera 

 saber ninguno de los nacidos. Nos parece q'le seria bien que llev^sedes 

 con vos un buen Estrologo, y nos parescia que seria bueno para esto 

 Fray Antonio de Marchena, porque es buen Estrologo, y siempre, nos 

 pareci8 que se conformaba con vuestro parecer." " The more we have 

 examined it, the more we have appreciated your undertaking, and the 

 more we have felt that you have shown by it that you know more than 

 any human being could be supposed to know. It appears to us that n 

 would be well for you to take with you some astrologer, and that Fray 

 Antonio de Marchena would be a very suitable person for such a pur- 

 pose." Respecting this Marchena, who is identical with Fray Juan 

 Perez, the guardian of the Convent de la Rabida, where Columbus, in 

 his poverty, in 1484, "asked the monks for bread and water for his 

 child," see Navarrete, t. ii., p. 110 ; t. iii., p. 597 and 603 (Muiioz, Hist, 

 del Niievo Mundo, lib. iv., ^ 24.) Columbus, in a letter from Jamaica 

 to the Christianisimos Monarcas, July 7, 1503, calls the astronomical 

 ephemerides " una vision profetica.^^ (Navarrete, t. i., p. 306.) The 

 Portuguese astronomer, Ruy Falero, a native of Cubilla, nominated by 

 Charles V., in 1519, Caballero de la Orden de Santiago, at the samo 

 time as Magellan, played an important part in the preparations for Ma- 

 gellan's voyage of circumnavigation. He had prepared expressly for 

 him a treatise on determinations of longitude, of which the great his- 

 torian Barros possessed some chapters in manuscript (_Ea:ame/i Crit.., t. 

 i., p. 276 and 302 ; t. iv., p. 315), probably the same which were print- 

 ed at Seville by John Escomberger in 1535. Navarrete {Obra posiuma 

 eohre la Hist, de la Nantica y de las ciencias Matematicas, 1846, p. 147) 

 had not been able to find the book even in Spain. Respecting the four 

 methods of determining the longitude which Falero had received from 

 the suggestions of his " Demonio familiar,^' see Herrera, Dec. ii., lib. 

 ii., cap. 19, and Navarrete, t. v., p. Ixxvii. Subsequently the cosmog- 

 rapher Alnuso de Santa Cruz, the same who (like the apothecaiy of 

 Seville, Felipe Guillen, 1525) attempted to determine the longitude bj 

 lueansof the variation of the magnetic nef die, made impracticable p^o 



