Lost Galleon (1867)/Notes
NOTES.
The Lost Galleon.—As the custom on which the central incident of this legend is based may not be familiar to all readers, I will repeat here, that it is the habit of navigators to drop a day from their calendar in crossing westerly the 180th degree of Longitude W. of Greenwich, adding a day in coming East, and that the idea of the Lost Galleon had an origin as prosaic as the Log of the first China mail steamer from this port. The explanation of the custom and its astronomical relations belong rather to the usual text books, than poetical narration. If any reader thinks I have overdrawn the credulous superstitions of the ancient navigators, I refer him to the veracious statements of Moldonado, De Fonté, the later voyages of La Perouse and Anson, and the charts of 1640.
In the charts of "that day" Spanish navigators reckoned Longitude East 360 degrees from the meridian of the Isle of Ferro. For the sake of perspicuity before a modern audience, the more recent meridian of Madrid was substituted. The custom of dropping a day at some arbitrary point in crossing the Pacific westerly, I need not say, remains unaffected by any change of meridian.
I know not if any galleon was ever really missing. For 250 years they made an annual trip between Acapulco and Manila. It may be some satisfaction to the more severely practical of my readers to know, that, according to the best statistics of insurance, the loss during that period would be exactly three vessels and six hundredths of a vessel, which would certainly justify me in this summary disposition of one.
The Goddess.—Contributed to the Fair for the Ladies' Patriotic Fund of the Pacific.
Relieving Guard.—Thomas Starr King died March 4th, 1864.
The Pliocene Skull.—This extraordinary fossil is in the possession of Dr. Whitney, of the State Geological Survey. The poem was based on the following paragraph from the daily press of 1866:
"A Human Skull has been found in California, in the pliocene formation. This skull is the remnant not only of the earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being. . . . The skull was found in a shaft one hundred and fifty feet deep, two miles from Angel's, in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Matson, who gave it to Mr. Scribner, a merchant, who gave it to Dr. Jones, who sent it to the State Geological Survey. . . . The published volume of the State Survey on the Geology of California states, that man existed here contemporaneously with the mastodon; but this fossil proves that he was here before the mastodon was known to exist."