Page:Tycho brahe.djvu/310

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284
TYCHO BRAHE.

sent a letter to Glaus Mule's mother, in which, she also described the travels of the family.[1] To his kinsman Eske Bille, who seems to have done his best for Tycho in the way of executing commissions and looking after his affairs at Hveen and elsewhere in Denmark, Tycho also wrote on this occasion. Bille had some months before sent him 700 daler, which however did not reach Prague till a short time before Christmas, and he was to receive some money which Tycho's cousin, Axel Gyldenstjerne (Governor of Norway), owed him; and on the other hand, he was to pay 5000 daler which Tycho owed to the widow of Heinrich Rantzov, which he did in the course of the year 1600.[2] Tycho's son got the instruments at Hveen dismounted and sent by sea to Lübeck, after which he returned to Bohemia, where he arrived in January 1600 with a supply of salt fish from Hveen, which island Tycho continued to hold in fee till his death. He was also the bearer of a great many letters from relatives and friends—among others, of one from Tycho Brahe's aged mother.

At that time the instruments were still at Lübeck, probably because Tycho's agent there was unable to get them sent on to Hamburg, where they did not arrive till the following April. On the 8th September 1599 the Emperor had written to the Burgomaster and Senate of Hamburg, desiring them to forward the instruments by ship on the Elbe, and Tycho himself had written to them on the 29th September, requesting them to get the instruments under way before the Elbe froze over, but these letters were

    Tychonis Brahe Relatio de statu suo post discessum ex patria, and more accurately in the Dänische Bibliothek, iii. 1740, p. 180 et seq. Translated in Weistritz, i. p. 169 et seq.

  1. Danske Magazin, ii. p. 359; Weistritz, ii. p. 365. Glaus Mule was a son of the Burgomaster of Odense in Denmark. A letter from Tycho to him (aparently written while Mule was abroad, perhaps at Rostock, as it alludes to Professor Caselius) is quoted above p. 240, footnote.
  2. Breve og Aktstykker, pp. 50, 57, 93, 101, 117, 148.