eady knew in detail
from books. Ptolemy thought that he had satisfactorily corrected[396-3]
Marinus, and yet this latter appears to have come very near to the truth.
Ptolemy placed Catigara[396-4] at a distance of twelve lines to the west
of his meridian, which he fixes at two degrees and a third beyond Cape
St. Vincent, in Portugal. Marinus comprised the earth and its limits in
fifteen lines.[396-5] Marinus on Ethiopia gives a description covering
more than twenty-four degrees beyond the equinoctial line, and now that
the Portuguese have sailed there they find it correct.[397-1] Ptolemy
says also that the most southern land is the first boundary, and that it
does not go lower down than fifteen degrees and a third.[397-2] The world
is but small; out of seven divisions of it the dry part occupies six,
and the seventh is entirely covered by water.[398-1] Experience has shown
it, and I have written it with quotations from the Holy Scripture, in
other letters, where I have treated of the situation of the terrestrial
paradise, as approved by the Holy Church;[398-2] and I say that the world
is not so large as vulgar opinion makes it, and that one degree of the
equinoctial line measures fifty-six miles and two-thirds; and this may be
proved to a nicety.[398-3]

But I leave this subject, which it is not my intention now to treat upon,
but simply to give a narrative of my laborious and painful voyage,
although of all my voyages it is the most honorable and advantageous. I
have said that on the eve of St. Simon and St. Jude I ran before the wind
wherever it took me, without power to resist it; at length I found
shelter for ten days from the roughness of the sea and the tempest
overhead, and resolved not to attempt to go back to the mines, which I
regarded as already in our possession.[398-4] When I started in pursuance
of my voyage it was under a heavy rain, and reaching the harbor of
Bastimentos I put in, though much against my will.[399-1] The storm and
a rapid current kept me in for fourteen days, when I again set sail, but
not with favorable weather. After I had made fifteen leagues with great
exertions, the wind and the current drove me back[399-2] again with great
fury, but in again making for the port which I had quitted, I found on
the way another port, which I named Retrete, where I put in for shelter
with as much risk as regret, the ships being in sad condition, and my
crews and myself exceedingly fatigued.[399-3] I rema