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384 pigafetta’s voyage round the world.

which Spain and Holland, and after them England and France , have proffered, andalready given very considerable rewards. It is therefore evident that Pigafetta ,having no exact data, could only give doubtful refults ; but this does not take awayfrom the aftronomers and navigators of his time the merit of having conceived, norfrom our author that of having pra£tifed, methods which, in modem times, have beenbrought to perfection, by removing the uncertainty refulting from the ufe of bad inftru-ments, and a want of correct agronomical and phyfical observations.

The celebrated navigator, Bougainville , fome Short time back read a memoir to theNational Inflitute of Paris *, in which he drew a comparifon between the means pof-feffed by Magellan and the immortal Cook: were I to repeat his remarks, we Should,without doubt fee that, if Cook made more extenfive and important voyages, Magellan ,deftitute as he was of the grand means poffeffed by the EngliSh Commodore, undertooka voyage which exacted a man of far Superior talents to his contemporaries, as well asof much greater energy of character. And, as Pigafetta wrote his treatife after theVoyage f, it is highly probable that he received from Magellan himfelf the nautical in-structions he has given, and that this captain-general was taught them by the aftronomerFaleiro, whofe knowledge was So admirable in his time as to caufe him to be fufpectedof being infpired by fome demon.

One cannot, it is true, attribute praife to our author when he attempts to explain themovements of the planets and Stars by the fyftem of Ptolemy , the abfurdity of whichis now demonstrated ; but on the other hand this error cannot be confidered as blame-able in him, when we reflect, that it was then in meafure confecrated, and call to mindthe misfortunes of Galileo, which were owing to his daring to oppofe the SyStem ofCopernicus, a century even later. Pigafetta was moreover in error when he pretendedto have discovered the longitude by means of the variation of the magnetic needle ; buteven this error is excufable on referring to the age in which he lived, and confideringthat he was deceived by a falfe theory ; for he imagined that there were in the heavensfome fixed fpot towards which the needle constantly pointed J ; and he was in fomemeafure confirmed in his opinion by the fact ; for at that time the magnetic needle onthe firSl meridian, fixed by Ptolemy at the ifland of Ferro §, was fubjeCl to little, if anydeviation, and in other places the degrees of longitude correfponded with the degreesof deviation of the needle from the north. Add to all this that the author of theArcano del Mare, a claSfical book on navigation, among other means of finding thelongitude at fea, recommends the paying attention to the variation of the compafs j| Jand that the celebrated Halley, after attentively noticing the obfervations of navigatorson the deviation of the needle, conceived it poflible to form circles by means of whichthe longitude of places might be determined by the variation, he himfelf being ignorantthat this variation is progreflive, and inconstant in its progression, and that confequentlyit cannot be Subjected to calculation 5 and moreover that computation, as was obferved

* Allgemeine Geogr. Ephem. Decemb. 1798, p. 553.

+ In the Treatife he quotes his Voyage, in which he {peaks of the liars round the fouthern pole.

f It mull neverthelcfs be obftrved that he«only adopts this explanation of the phenomenon for want ofa better.

$ By the table of the declenfions of the magnetic needle, publifhed by the learned Lambert in theephemeridea of Berlin, {Allronomifche Jahrbuch for the year 1779) it will be found, by mean* of a Ihortcalculation, that at the beginning of the fixteenth century the magnetic equator, or the 0 of deviation, wasnear the ifland of Teneriffe. At prefent it is diftant, and every day becomes further from it. M-Bougainville found the declenfion of the needle in this part to be i.j.° 41' W* ; and Staunton, who accom*panicd Lord Macartney on his Ejnbafly to China , 17* 35' W.

U Tome i. p. xi.

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