kxxiv NOTES. 



figure instead, .but in an equally arbitrary manner, the Southern Cross (Hum- 

 boldt, Examen crit. de 1'Hist. de la Geogr. T. v. p. 236). As it was usual 

 in the Middle Ages to seek to replace the two dancers (xopevrai) of Hyginus 

 (Poet, astron. iii. 1), i. e. the Ludentes of the scholiast, to Germanicus, or 

 Custodes of Vegetius, in the Little Bear, the stars and 7 of that constel- 

 lation were made into the Guards (le due Guardie) of the North Pole, near 

 to which they are situated, and round which they revolve ; and as this name 

 of the " two Guards," as well as the use made of them for determining the 

 height of the Pole (Pedro de Medina, Arte de Navegar, 1545, libro v. cap. 4 

 7, p. 183 195), had become general among the navigators of all European 

 nations in the Northern Seas so, erroneous inferences of analogy led men to 

 think they discovered on the southern horizon what they had long before 

 sought for there. When Amerigo Vespucci, on his second voyage from May 

 1499 to Sept. 1500, and Vicente Yanez Pinzon (both whose voyages are 

 perhaps the same), arrived as far south in the Southern Hemisphere as Cape 

 San Augustin, they first began to occupy themselves diligently, but vainly, in 

 seeking for a star visible in the immediate vicinity of the Southern Pole 

 (Bandiui, Vita e Lettere di Amerigo Vespucci, 1745, p. 70; Anghiera, 

 Oceanica, 1510, Dec. I. lib. ix. p. 96 ; Humboldt, Examen crit. T. iv. p. 205, 

 319, and 325). The South Pole of the heavens was then in the constellation 

 of the Octant, so that /8 Hydrse minoris, if we make the reduction according 

 to Brisbane's Catalogue, had still fully 80 5' South Declination. Vespucci, 

 in a letter addressed to Pietro Francesco de' Medici, said : " Whilst I was 

 occupied with the wonders of the southern heavens, and seeking amongst 

 them iu vain for a southern Pole-star, I remembered a few words of our 

 Dante, where, in the first chapter of the Purgatorio, supposing himself passing 

 from one hemisphere to the other, and intending, I believe, to describe the 

 Antarctic Pole, he sings 



" lo mi volsi a man destra" ..... 



I feel the more certain that the poet meant to indicate by his four stars (nou 

 viste mai fuor ch' alia prima geute) the Pole of the other firmament, because 

 I saw in reality four stars which, together, formed a c mandorla,' and had a 

 small (?) motion." Vespucci meant the Southern Cross, the Croce maravigliosa 

 of Andrea Corsali (Letter from Cochin of the 6th of January, 1515, in 

 Rainusio, Vol. i. p. 177), with the name of which he was not yet acquainted, 

 and which subsequently was made use of by all navigators (like )8 and 7 of 



