bique the versorium inclines 14 rumbe or even more to the south-west. Very wrongly also beyond the æquator in the course to Goa they make the little compass incline by 112 rumbe to the west: whereas they should rather have said that in the first part of the course the Portuguese compass inclines by 1 rumbe: but that the true meridional compass inclines by 12 rumbe only. In order that the amount of variation in the Eastern Ocean may be accurately settled in most places by our rules, there is needed a more exact and truer survey of the southern land, which spreads out from the south to the æquinoctial more than is commonly described on maps and globes.
CHAP. XXI.
How the deviation of the versorium is augmented and
diminished by reason of the distance of places.
n the middle of great and continent lands there is no variation. Nor, generally, in the middle of very great seas. On the margin of those lands and seas the variation is often ample, yet not so great as at a little further distance on the sea. As, for example, near Cape St. Augustine the compass varies; but at 50 miles from land toward the East it varies more; and 80 miles off it varies still more; and yet still more at a distance of 100 miles. But from a distance of 100 miles the diminutions of deviation are slower, when they are navigating toward the mainland, than at a distance of 80 miles, and at a distance of 80 miles than at 50: for the deviations change and are diminished rather more swiftly the more they approach and draw near land than when at a great distance off. As, for instance, navigating toward Newfoundland the change of variation is more rapid (that is, it decreases a degree in a smaller arc of the course on the parallel) when they are not far from land than when they are a hundred miles distant: but when travelling on land toward the interiors of regions the changes are slower in the first parts of the journey than when they come more into the interior.
The ratio of the arcs on a parallel circle, when a versorium is moved toward continents which extend to the pole, corresponds with the degrees of variation. Let A be the pole; B the eminences of the dominant lands; at C there is no variation caused by B, for it is too far away; at D the variation is very great because the versorium is allured or turned by the whole earth toward the eminent land
