( II ) 



The third author John de Laet, whofe opinion I 

 ought to relate, acknowledges that there is a great 

 deal of good fenfe and folid reafoning in that of fa- 

 ther de Acofta. What he does not approve of is 

 what follows. Firft, he pretends that the Jefuit is 

 in the wrong to fuppofe that long paffages by fea 

 cannot be made, without the help of the needle, 

 fince we may navigate by the help of the ftars only ; 

 and, that he even feems to contradict himfelf, by 

 afTerting that the compafs is a late invention, after 

 telling us, that the ufe of it was very antient on the 

 coaft of Mozambique in the fifteenth Century ; that 

 he advances without proof that the Orientals were 

 unacquainted with it, till it had been found out by 

 the people of the weft ; laftly, that it was very evi- 

 dent either that we could do without it, or that it 

 muft have been known in the earlieft times, fince 

 jfeveral iflands, even of our hemifphere, and thofe 

 at a confiderable diftance from the continent, were 

 peopled very foon after the deluge. 



Secondly, that he relates as a thing certain, the 

 ftory of the Pilot, from whofe memoirs it is pre-> 

 tended Chriftopher Columbus learned the route of 

 the New World, as alfo that of the Indians fent to 

 Metellus Celer by the king of the Suevi; that we 

 )<:now that the Spaniards fpread abroad the firft re- 

 port merely out of jealoufy of that great man to 

 whom they owed the obligation of having put them 

 in pofTefTion of fo many rich countries, and whofe 

 only misfortune it was not to have been born in 

 Spain ; and that the occafion of their publifhing the 

 fecond was only to rob the Portuguefe of the glory 

 of having firft opened a way to the Indies by failing 

 round Africa ; that he is deceived if he thinks it 

 pofiible to make the paflage from Terra Auftralis 

 to the Streights of Magellan, without eroding the 



fea, 



