INTRODUCTION. 



XI 



The pioneer goes and returns : " Which way did you go ? How 

 Ues the route ? Give us your sailing directions," say his followers. 



XXVII. He that is questioned can speak only of the route by 

 which he went and came. He knows of no others; and this, 

 therefore, he commends to his followers, and they to those who 

 come after them ; and thus, in many cases, the route from place to 

 place across the sea was, it was ascertained, handed down from 

 sailor to sailor by tradition, or as legend, and very much in the 

 same w^ay that the overland route of the first emigrants to Cali- 

 fornia continued to be followed season after season. 



XXYin. Among other things, these legends told of the most 

 sweeping currents to the north of St. Roque, along the coast of 

 Brazil. The vessel, said they, that should fall so far to leeward of 

 that cape and coast as to come within the influence of these cur- 

 rents, was almost sure to be beset, and her crew to be cast upon 

 an iron-bound coast amid the horrors of shipwreck. 



XXIX. Now these investigations have proved that there is no 

 current there worth the name, and no danger to be apprehended 

 when it is encountered, and so mariners now allude to these cur- 

 rents as the " bugbear" of St. Roque. 



XXX. Nevertheless, impressed with these legends and tradi- 

 tions, the early navigators of this country, when they first com- 

 menced to double the Cape of Good Hope on trading voyages, 

 thought it most prudent to make the best of their way to the route 

 from Europe, which had been often tried and was well known. 

 They aimed to fall in with this route about the Cape de Yerd Isl- 

 ands. The winds there threw them back on this side of the At- 

 lantic, upon the coast of Brazil, and so they had to cross the ocean 

 again to reach the Cape of Good Hope. But every body said that 

 was the way, and it was so written down in the books. Hence 

 the zigzag route (§ XXIL), and the supposed necessity, on the out- 

 ward voyage to India, of crossing the Atlantic Ocean three times 

 instead of once. 



XXXI. The results of the first chart, however (§ XIII.), though 

 meagre and unsatisfactory, were brought to the notice of naviga- 

 tors ; their attention was called to the blank spaces, and the im- 

 portance of more and better observations than the old sea-chests 

 generally contained was urged upon them. 



