LENGTH OF A DEGREE 11 



miento de la Sacra Escritura, con el sitio del Paraiso 

 terrenal que la sancta Iglesia aprueva. digo que el mundo 

 no es tan grande como dige el vulgo, i que un grado de 

 la equinogial esta .56. millas i dos tergios; presto se 

 tocara con el dedo.^"* (The world is but small; the 

 dry part of it is six parts, the seventh only is covered 

 by water. Experience has shown it, and I have discussed 

 it in other letters, with quotations from the Holy Scrip- 

 ture, with the situation of the terrestrial paradise, which 

 the Holy Church has approved. I say that the world 

 is not so large as the common crowd says it is, and that 

 one degree on the equator is fifty-six miles and two- 

 thirds. This is a fact that one can touch with one's own 

 fingers.) 



Analysis of the Statements of Columbus 



It will be obser\^ed that several of the passages 

 quoted (II, IV, V, VI, and VIII) are mere reitera- 

 tions of the assertion that a degree is equal to 56^ 

 miles. Quotation III is a note on the Dias expe- 

 dition to the Cape of Good Hope and is only of in- 

 cidental value. The last extract, IX, which is from 

 the letter of July 7, 1503, contains the added informa- 

 tion that the world is smaller than popularly supposed ; 

 the notion that six-sevenths of it is dry land is de- 

 rived from the Books of Esdras. 



14 Letter of July 7, 1503, on the fourth voyage, in Raccolta, Part I, 

 Vol. 2, pp. 175-205; reference on p. 184. The same letter in modernized 

 Spanish, with English translation, in R. H. Major, transl. and edit.: 

 Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, With Other Original Docu- 

 ments, Relating to His Four Vo3ages to the New World, 2nd edit., 

 Hakluyl Soc. Pubis., ist Series, Vol. 43, London, 1870, pp. 183-184. 



