286 COSMOS. 



the case at the time of Hiram and the Ptolemies, or during 

 the Roman dominion, and the period in which the Arabs 

 maintained commercial intercourse with the nations dwellinof 

 on the shores of the Red Sea or of the Indian Ocean, between 

 the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and the western peninsula of 

 India. Amerigo Vespucci, in his letters, Vicente Yaiiez Piii- 

 zon, Pigafetta, the companion of Magellan and Elcano, and 

 Andrea Corsali, in his voyage to Cochin in the East Indies, 

 in the beginning of the sixteenth century, gave the first and 

 most animated accounts of the southern sky (beyond the feet 

 of the Centaur and the glorious constellation Argo). Amer- 

 igo, who had higher literary acquirements, and whose style 

 was also more redundant than that of the others, extols, not 

 ungracefully, the glowing richness of the light, and the pic- 

 turesque grouping and strange aspect of the constellations that 

 circle round the southern pole, which is surrounded by so few 

 stars. He maintains, in his letters to Pierfrancesco de' M^- 

 ici, that he had carefully devoted his attention, on his third 

 voyage, to the southern constellations, having made drawings 

 of them and measured their polar distances. His communi- 

 cations regarding these observations do not, indeed, leave 

 much cause to regret that any portion of them should have 

 been lost. 



I find that the first mention of the mysterious black specks 

 (coal-bags) was made by Anghiera in the year 1510. They 

 had already been observed in 1499 by the companions of Vi- 

 cente Yaiiez Pinzon, on the expedition dispatched from Palos, 

 and which took possession of the Brazilian Cape San Augus- 

 tin.* The Canopo fosco {Canopus 7iiger) of Amerigo is prob- 

 ably also one of these coal-bags. The intelligent Acosta com- 

 pares them to the darkened portion of the moon's disk (in par- 

 tial eclipses), and appears to ascribe them to a void in the 

 heavens, or to an absence of stars. Rigaud has shown how 

 the reference to the coal-bags, of which Acosta says positively 

 that they are visible in Peru (and not in Europe), and move 

 round the south pole, has been regarded by a celebrated as- 

 tronomer as the first notice of spots on the sun.f The knowl- 

 edge of the two Magellanic clouds has been unjustly ascribed 

 to Pigafetta, for I find that Anghiera, on the observations of 

 Portuguese seamen, mentions these clouds fully eight years 



* Petr. Mart., Ocean., Dec. i., lib. ix., p. 96 ; Examen Crit., t. iv., p. 

 221 and 317. 



t Acosta, Hist. Natural de las Indias, lib. i., cap. 2; Rigaud, Account 

 of Harriotts Astron. Papers, 1833, p. 37. 



