[North] unto the equinoctial, we spent no less than thirty days, partly with contrary winds, partly with calm.
The 30th of May we passed the equinoctial with contentation, directing our course, as well as we could to pass the promontory: but in all that gulf, and in all the way besides, we found so often calms that the expertest mariners wondered at it. And in places where are always wont to be most horrible tempests, we found most quiet calms, which were very troublesome to those ships [the caracks]; which be the greatest of all other and cannot go without good winds. Insomuch that when it is a tempest almost intolerable for other ships, and maketh them main [furl] all their sails; these hoist up theirs, and sail excellently well; unless the waters be too furious, which seldom happeneth in our navigation. You shall understand, that being passed the line, they cannot straightway go the next way to the promontory; but according to the wind, they draw always as near south as they can put themselves in the latitude of the point, which is 35° 30' [South] and then they take their course towards the east, and so compass the point. But the wind served us so, that at 30° [South] we did direct our course toward the point or promontory of Good Hope.
You know that it is hard to sail from East to West, because there is no fixed point in all the sky, whereby they may direct their course: wherefore I shall tell you what helps God provided for these men. There is not a fowl that appeareth, or sign in the air or in the sea; which they have not written which have made the voyages heretofore. Wherefore partly by their own experience, and pondering withal what space the ship is able to make with such a wind and such a direction, and partly by the experience of others, whose books and navigations they have, they guess where-abouts they be touching degrees of longitude. For of latitude they be always sure. But the greatest and best industry of all is to mark the variation of the needle or compass which in the meridian of the island of Saint Michael, which is one of the Azores, in the latitude of Lisbon, is just north, and thence swerveth towards the east so much that betwixt the meridian aforesaid and the point of Africa [i.e. the Cape of Good Hope] it carrieth three or four quarters of thirty-two [or in modern language, the magnetic variation at the*
