COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 633
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 mainmast,
belongs originally to Ilipparchus. When Vasco de Gama
pedcs (Rcriimiento, pp. 99 and 156) calls this mode of proceeding " cchar
punto por fantasia." This fantasia, as. Enciso justly remarks, depends, if
great errors are to be avoided, on the pilot's knowledge of the qualities
of his ship: on the -whole, however, ever}- one who has been long at sea
will have remarked, with surprise, when the waves are not very high,
how nearly the mere estimation of the ship's velocity accords with the
subsequent result obtained by the log. Some Spanish pilots call the
old, and, it must be admitted, hazardous, method of mere estimation
(cuenta de estima), sarcastically, and certainly very incorrectly, " la
c-orrcdera de los Holandeses, corredera de los perezosos." In Columbus'
ship's journal, reference is frequently made to the dispute with
Alonso Pinzon, as to the distance passed over since their departure
from Palos. The hour or sand-glasses, ampolletas, Avhich they made use
of, ran out in half an hour, so that the interval of a day and night was
reckoned at 48 ampolletas. We find in this important journal of Columbus
(as, for example, on the 22nd of January, 1493) :
" andaba 8 millas
por hora hasta pasadas 5 ampolletas, y 3 antes que comenzase la guardia,
que eran 8 ampolletas." (Navarrete, t. i. p. 143.) No mention is ever
made of the log (la corredera). Are we to assume that Columbus was
acquainted with and employed it, and that he did not think it necessary
to name it, owing to its being already in very general use, in the same
way that Marco Polo has not mentioned tea, or the great wall of China'.'
Such an assumption appears to me very improbable, because I find in
the proposals made by the pilot, Don Jayme Ferrer, 1495, for the exact
determination of the position of the Papal line of demarcation, that
Avhen there is a question regarding the distance sailed over, the appeal
is made only to the accordant judgment (juicio) of twenty very experienced
seamen (" que apunten en sn carta de 6 en6 horas el camino que
la nao fa-ra segun su juicio"). If the log had been in use, no doubt
Ferrer would 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 circumnavigation, which long lay
buried among the manuscripts in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. It
is there said, that, in the month of January 1521, when Magellan had
already arrived in the Pacific, " Secondo la misura che facevamo del
viaggio colla catena a poppa, noi percorrevamo da 60 in 70 leghe al
giorno" (Amorelli, Primo Viaggio intorno al Globo terracqneo, ossia
Naviyazione fatta dal Cavaliere Antonio Pigqfetta sulla squadra del
Cap. Mayayliancs, 1800, p. 46). What can this arrangement of a chain
at the hinder part of the ship (catena a
"
poppa), which we used throughout
the entire voyage to measure the way," have been, except an apparatus
nimilar to our log] Xo special mention is made of the log-line divided
into knots, the ship's log, and the half-minute or log-glass, tut this