would necessarily be to climb up hill, and which no ship could accomplish
even with the stiffest gale. Although the admiral gave perfectly valid
answers to all these objections; yet, such was the ignorance of these
people, that the more his reasons were powerful and conclusive so much the
less were they understood: For when people have grown old in prejudices
and false notions of philosophy and mathematics, these get such firm hold
of the mind that true and just principles are utterly unintelligible.

The prior and his coadjutors were all influenced by a Spanish proverb,
which, though contradictory to reason and common sense, says _Dubitat
Augustinus_, or it is contradicted by St Augustine; who, in the 9th
chapter of the 21st book of his city of God, denies the possibility of the
_Antipodes_, or that any person should be able to go from one hemisphere
into the other. They farther urged against the admiral the commonly
received opinions concerning the five zones, by which the torrid zone is
declared utterly uninhabitable, and many other arguments equally absurd
and ridiculous. Upon the whole, they concluded to give judgment against
the enterprize as vain and impracticable, and that it did not become the
state and dignity of such great princes to act upon such weak information
as they conceived to have been communicated. Therefore, after much time
spent in the business, the admiral received for answer that their Catholic
majesties were then occupied in many other wars, and particularly in the
conquest of Granada then going on, and could not therefore conveniently
attend to this new undertaking; but that on some future opportunity of
greater leisure and convenience, they would have more time to examine into
his proposal. To conclude, their majesties refused to listen to the great
proposals which the admiral made to them.

While these matters were in agitation, their Catholic majesties had not
been always resident in one place, owing to the war of Granada in which