OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 293 



taching a special and well-informed astronomer to every great 

 expedition was so generally felt, that Queen Isabella wrote to 

 Columbus on the 5th of September, 1493, " that although he 

 had shown in his undertakings that he knew more than any 

 other living being {que ninguno de los nacidos), she counseled 

 him. nevertheless, to take with him Fray Antonio de Marche- 

 na, as being a learned and skillful astronomer." Columbus 

 writes, in the narrative of his fourth voyage, that " there was 

 only one infallible method of taking a ship's reckoning, viz., 

 that employed by astronomers. He who understands it may 

 rest satisfied, for that which it yields is like unto a prophetic 

 vision {vision profetica.)* Our ignorant pilots, when they 



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

 no, habemos visto algo del libro que nos dejustes,''^ " we ourselves, and 

 no one else, have seen the book you have seat us" (a journal of his 

 voyage, in which the distrustful navigator had omitted all numerical 

 data (yf degrees of latitude and of distances) : •' quanto mas en esto plati- 

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

 tro, y que habeis sabido en ello mas que nimca se pens6 que pudiera 

 saber ninguno de los nacidos. Nos parece qve seria bien que llevdsedes 

 con vos uu 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." Respecting 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., p. 597 and 603 (Munoz, Hist. 

 del Nnevo Mundo, lib. iv., § 24.) Columbus, in a letter from Jamaica 

 to the Christianisimos Monarcas, July 7, 1503, calls the astronomical 

 ei)hemerides '■'■una vision profetica.^^ (Navarrete, t. i., p. 306.) The 

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

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

 time as Magellan, played an important part in the preparations for Ma« 

 gellan's voyage of circumnavigation. He had prepared expressly for 

 him a treatise on determinations of longitude, of which the great his- 

 torian Barros possessed some chapters in manuscript {Examen Crii., t. 

 i., p. 276 and 302 ; t. iv., p. 315), probably the same which were print- 

 ed at Seville by John Escomberger in 1535. Navarrete (Obra pdsivma 

 $obre la Hist, de la Nautica y de las ciencias Matematicas, 1846, p. 147) 

 had not been able to find the book even in Spain. Respecting the four 

 methods of determining the longitude which F'alero had received from 

 the suggestions of his " Demonio familiar," see Herrera, Dec. ii., lib. 

 ii., cap. 19, and Navarrete, t. v., p. Ixxvii. Subsequently the cosmog- 

 rapher 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 impracticable pro 



