nano, and which was printed in 1508[1] in chapter sixty, reckons a distance of three thousand eight hundred leagues, or fifteen thousand miles from Lisbona to Calicut, and declares in the last chapter that it is a three months' voyage from Calicut to Zamotra.
Item: the said distance is proved to be much greater, as we assert, because of certain persons who traveled through and navigated the lands and seas eastward from the sea Rojo [Red Sea] and recorded their voyages at a time when there was no suspicion of a discussion like the present. [Gerónimo de Santisteban, a Genoese, is given as an example. He sailed from Aden to Calicut in thirty days, and in eighty-three days from Calicut to Zaumotra (Sumatra), a distance of about fourteen hundred leagues. "with this number agree Marco Paulo (Marco Polo) and Juan de Mandevilla (John Mandeville) in the selfsame voyages and travels made by them, as is stated very diffusely in their books." The three-year voyage of King Solomon's ships, as recorded in "the third book of the Kings"[2] to "Ofir and Zetin whence they brought the gold to build the Temple," and which places "all writers upon the sacred scriptures assert" to be toward the most eastern part of India," agree with the same figures.] From all the above, therefore it is inferred that the navigation from the said Mar Rubro [Red Sea] to the eastern
- ↑ This is a Latin translation of Paesi nouamente retronati (Vicenza, 1507)—the earliest known collection of voyages. It is supposed to have been compiled by Alessandro Zorzi, a Venetian cosmographer (according to Bartlett); but Fracanzio di Montalboddo, according to Quaritch (Catalogue No. 362, 1885). Facsimiles of the titles of both books are given in Bartlett's Bibliotheca Americana, part i, p. 40.
- ↑ This is the book called today "the first book of the Kings."
