Page:First Voyage Round the World.djvu/291

the Mamuco Diata; that is, the Bird of God, by which they believe themselves to be safe and invincible in battle. Of which five were sent, and one I obtained from the captain (con gran prieghi), which I send to your reverence, not that your reverence may think yourself safe from treachery and the sword by means of it, as they profess to do, but that you may be pleased by its rareness and beauty. I send also some cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves, to show that our spices are not only not worse, but more valuable than those which the Venetians and Portuguese bring, because they are fresher. When our men had set sail from Thedori, one of the ships, and that the larger one, having sprung a leak, began to make water, so that it became necessary to put back to Thedori. When the Spaniards saw that this mischief could not be remedied without great labour and much time, they agreed that the other ship should sail to the Cape of Cattigara, and afterwards through the deep as far as possible from the coast of India, lest it should be seen by the Portuguese, and until they saw the Promontory of Africa, which projects beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, and to which the Portuguese have given the name of Good Hope; and from that point the passage to Spain would be easy. But as soon as the other ship was refitted, it should direct its course through the archipelago, and that vast ocean towards the shores of the continent which we mentioned before, till it found that coast which was in the neighbourhood of Darien, and where the southern sea was separated from the western, in which are the Spanish Islands, by a very narrow space of land. So the ship sailed again from Thedori, and, having gone twelve degrees on the other side of the equinoctial line, they did not find the Cape of Cattigara, which Ptolemy supposed to extend even beyond the equinoctial line; but when they had traversed an immense space of sea, they came to the Cape of Good Hope and afterwards to the Islands of the Hesperides.