fect could not be put right except with much labor and loss of time, agreed that the other ship [the Victoria] should sail to the Cape of Cattigara, thence across the ocean as far as possible from the Indian coast, lest they should be seen by the Portuguese, until they came in sight of the southern point of Africa, beyond the tropic of Capricorn, which the Portuguese call the Cape of Good Hope, for thence the voyage to Spain would be easy. It was also arranged that, when the repairs of the other ship were completed, it should sail back through the archipelago and the Vast [Pacific] Ocean to the coast of the continent which we have already mentioned [South America], until they came to the Isthmus of Darien, where only a narrow neck of land divides the South Sea from the Western Sea, in which are the islands belonging to Spain. The smaller ship accordingly set sail again from Thedori, and though they went as far as twelve degrees south, they did not find Cattigara,[1] which Ptolemy considered to lie considerably south of the equator; however after a long voyage, they arrived in sight of the Cape of Good Hope, and thence sailed to the Cape Verde Islands. Here this ship also, after having been so long at sea, began to be leaky, and the men, who had lost several of their companions through hardships in the course of their adventures, were unable to keep the water pumped out. They therefore landed at one
- ↑ "They did not find Cattigara" is as true today as when Maximilian wrote in 1522. For various conflicting authorities upon its site north of the equator, cf. ante p. 312, and McCrindle's Ancient India, 1885, p. 10. Ptolemy however places it (Asia Tab. xi) nine degrees south of the equator. For a curious chapter upon this point see Manoel Godinho de Eredia's Malacca, edited by Janssen, Brussels, 1883. 4to, part 3. Why not Kota-Radja at the north end of Sumatra?—Stevens.
