INTRODUCTION. 
XI 
The pioneer goes and returns : " Which way did you go ? How 
Hes the route ? Grive us your saihng directions," say his followers. 
XXVII. He that is questioned can speak only of the route by 
which he went and came. He knows of no others ; and this, 
therefore, he commends to his followers, and they to those who 
come after them ; and thus, in many cases, the route from place to 
place across the sea was, it was ascertained, handed down from 
sailor to sailor by tradition, or as legend, and very much in the 
same way that the overland route of the first emigrants to Cali- 
fornia continued to be followed season after season. 
XXYIIL Among other things, these legends told of the most 
sweeping currents to the north of St. Eoque, along the coast of 
Brazil. The vessel, said they, that should fall so far to leeward of 
that cape and coast as to come within the influence of these cur- 
rents, was almost sure to be beset, and her crew to be cast upon 
an iron-bound coast amid the horrors of shipwreck. 
XXIX. Now these investigations have proved that there is no 
current there w^orth the name, and no danger to be apprehended 
when it is encountered, and so mariners now allude to these cur- 
rents as the " bugbear" of St. Roque. 
XXX. Nevertheless, impressed with these legends and tradi- 
tions, the early navigators of this country, when they first com- 
menced to double the Cape of G-ood Hope on trading voyages, 
thought it most prudent to make the best of their way to the route 
from Europe, which had been often tried and was well known. 
They aimed to fall in with this route about the Cape de Yerd Isl- 
ands. The winds there threw them back on this side of the At- 
lantic, upon the coast of Brazil, and so they had to cross the ocean 
again to reach the Cape of G-ood Hope. But every body said that 
was the way, and it was so written down in the books. Hence 
the zigzag route (§ XXII.), and the supposed necessity, on the out- 
ward voyage to India, of crossing the Atlantic Ocean three times 
instead of once, 
XXXI. The results of the first chart, however (§ XIII.), though 
meagre and unsatisfactory, were brought to the notice of naviga- 
tors ; their attention was called to the blank spaces, and the im- 
portance of more and better observations than the old sea-chests 
generally contained was urged upon them. 
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