258 COSMOS. 



navigation of the Spaniards and Portuguese, can not be ovei> 

 looked. The great instruments of the schools of Bagdad and 

 Cairo were imitated, on a small scale, for nautical purposes. 

 Their names even were transferred ; thus, for instance, that 

 of *• astrolabon " given by Martin Behaim to the main-mast, 

 belongs originally to Hipparchus. When Vasco de Gama 

 landed on the eastern coast of Africa, he found that the Indian 

 pilots at Melinde were acquainted with the use of astrolabes 

 and ballestilles.* Thus, by the more general intercourse con- 

 sequent on increasing cosmical relations, by original inventions, 

 and by the mutual fructification afforded by the mathematical 

 and astronomical sciences, were all things gradually prepared 

 for the discovery of tropical America ; the rapid determination 

 of its configuration ; the passage round the southern point of 

 Africa to India ; and, finally, the first circumnavigation of 

 the globe — great and glorious events, which, in the space of 

 thirty years (from 1492 to 1522), contributed so largely in ex- 

 tending the general knowledge of the regions of the earth. 

 The minds of men were rendered more acute and more capa- 

 ble of comprehending the vast abundance of new phenomena 

 presented to their consideration, of analyzing them, and, by 

 comparing one with another, of employing them for the foun- 

 dation of higher and more general views regarding the uni- 

 verse. 



It will be sufl[icient here to touch upon the more prominent 

 elements of these higher views, which were capable of lead- 

 distance sailed over, the appeal is made only to the accordant judgment 

 (juicio) of twenty very experienced seamen (" que apunten en sucar- 

 ta de 6 en 6 horas el camino que la nao fai'd segun su juicio"). If the 

 log had been in use, no doubt Ferrer w^ould have indicated how often 

 it should be thrown. I find the first mention of the application of the 

 log in a passage of Pigafetta's Journal of Magellan's voyage of circum 

 navigation, which long lay buried among the manuscripts in the Am- 

 brosian Library at Milan. It is there said that, in the month of Janu- 

 ary, 1521, when Magellan had already arrived in the Pacific, " Secondo 

 la misura che facevamo del viaggio colla catena a poppa, noi percorre- 

 vamo da 60 in 70 leghe al giorno" (Amorelli, Primo Viaggio intorno 

 al Globo Terracqueo, ossia Navigazione fatta dal Cavaliere Antonio 

 Pigafetta sulla squadra del Cap. Magaglianes, 1800, p. 46). What 

 can this arrangement of a chain at the hinder part of a ship (catena a 

 poppa), " which we used throughout the entire voyage to measure the 

 way," have been, except an apparatus similar to our log? No special 

 mention is made of the log-line divided into knots, the ship's log, and 

 the half-minute or log-glass, but this silence need not surprise us when 

 reference is made to a long-known matter. In the part of the Trattato 

 di Navigazione of the Cavalier Pigafetta, given by Amoretti in extracts, 

 amounting, indeed, only to ten pages, the " catena della poppa" is not 

 again mentioned. * Barros, Dec. i., liv. iv., p. 320 



