THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 65 



years of age. He was set over the Jesuit missionary 

 stations in Peru, and resided for many years at their 

 chief settlement, Juli, on Lake Titicaca, from which he 

 ultimately removed to Lima. He sailed to Mexico in 

 1583, and returned to Spain in 1587. His last years 

 were spent at Valladolid and Salamanca, where he 

 presided over Jesuit colleges, and he died at Salamanca 

 in 1600. 



Acosta sets out by proving that the same sky which 

 over-arches Europe extends all the way to America. 

 The glorious Chrysostom had indeed maintained a 

 contrary opinion, but Acosta had sailed as far as the 

 tropic of Capricorn, and seen the northern constellations 

 gradually sink as the southern cross rose. He explains 

 the motion of the heavenly bodies by supposing that the 

 star- sphere revolves about the immovable, spherical 

 earth, just what his contemporary, Tycho Brahe had 

 taught in the same year (1588). 



Another preliminary question which Acosta feels 

 bound to discuss is the question how America became 

 peopled. Since all men are descended from Adam, the 

 first human inhabitants of the New World must have 

 been derived from the eastern hemisphere. They could 

 not have crossed the ocean, for they had no compass. 

 But the tribes of men are only part of the problem ; 

 America has its animals also, som'e of them large and 

 ferocious. Saint Augustine^ had long before pointed 

 out that the presence of such animals in islands is 

 a great difficulty ; he thought it possible that they 

 might either have swum across from the mainland, or 

 sprung out of the earth, or even have been carried 

 across by those who took delight in hunting. Acosta 

 rejects all these explanations ; he cannot suppose that 



1 De Civitatey lib. XVI, cap. vii. 

 S 



