672 COSMOS. 



like unto a prophetic vision (vision profetica)"* Our ignorant 



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

 alguno, habemos visto algo del libra que nos dejhstes" " we ourselves, 

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

 voyage, in which the distrustful navigator had omitted all numerical 

 data of degrees of latitude and of distances) : quanto mas en esto plati- 

 camos y vemos, conocemos cuan gran cosa ha seido este negocio vuestro, 

 y que habeis sabido en ello mas que nunca se penso que pudiera saber 

 ninguno de los nacidos. Nos parece que seria bien que llevasedes con 

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

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

 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 it 

 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." Kespecting 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. pp. 597 and 603. (Munoz, Hist, del 

 Nuevo Mundo, lib. iv. 24.) Columbus, in a letter from Jamaica, to 

 the Christianisimos Monarcas, July 7, 1503, calls the astronomical ephe- 

 merides, "una vision profetica" (Navarrete, t. i. p. 306.) The Por- 

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

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

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

 lan's voyage of circumnavigation. He had prepared, expressly for him, 

 a treatise on determinations of loagitude, of which the great historian 

 Barros possessed some chapters in manuscript (Examen crit, t. i. 

 pp. 276 and 302; t. iv. p. 315), probably the same which were printed 

 at Seville by John Escomberger in 1535. Navarrete (Obra postuma 

 sobre la Hist, de la Nautica y de las ciencias matematicas, 1846, 

 p. 147) had not been able to find the book even in Spain. Respect- 

 ing the four methods of determining the longitude which Falero 

 had received from the suggestions of his " Demonio familiar '," see 

 Herrera, Dec. 11, lib. ii. cap. 19; and Navarrete, t. v. p. Ixxvii. Subse- 

 quently the cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, the same who (like the 

 apothecary of Seville, Felipe Guillen, 1525) attempted to determine the 

 longitude by means of the variation of the magnetic needle, made im- 

 practicable proposals for accomplishing the same object by the con- 

 Teyance of time; but his chronometers were sand-and- water clocks, 

 wheelworks moved by weights, and even by wicks " dipped in oil," 

 which were consumed in very equal intervals of time ! Pigafetta 

 (Transunto del Trattato di Navigazione, p. 219) recommends altitudes 

 of the moon at the meridian. Amerigo Vespucci, ^peaking of the 

 method of determining longitude by lunar distances, says with great 

 naivete and truth, that its advantages arise from the " corso piu 

 della luna." (Canovai- Viuyui, p. o7.) 



