undertaking by standing directly westwards, but made very slow progress at
first on account of calms. On Sunday the ninth of September, about
day-break, they were nine leagues west of the island of Ferro. Now losing
sight of land and stretching out into utterly unknown seas, many of the
people expressed their anxiety and fear that it might be long before they
should see land again; but the admiral used every endeavour to comfort
them with the assurance of soon finding the land he was in search of, and
raised their hopes of acquiring wealth and honour by the discovery. To
lessen the fear which they entertained of the length of way they had to
sail, he gave out that they had only proceeded fifteen leagues that day,
when the actual distance sailed was eighteen; and to induce the people to
believe that they were not so far from Spain as they really were, he
resolved to keep considerably short in his reckoning during the whole
voyage, though he carefully recorded the true reckoning every day in
private.

On Wednesday the twelfth September, having got to about 150 leagues west
of Ferro, they discovered a large trunk of a tree, sufficient to have been
the mast to a vessel of 120 tons, and which seemed to have been a long
time in the water. At this distance from Ferro, and for somewhat farther
on, the current was found to set strongly to the north-east. Next day,
when they had run fifty leagues farther westwards, the needle was observed
to vary half a point to the eastward of north, and next morning the
variation was a whole point east. This variation of the compas had never
been before observed, and therefore the admiral was much surprised at the
phenomenon, and concluded that the needle did not actually point towards
the polar star, but to some other fixed point. Three days afterwards, when
almost 100 leagues farther west, he was still more astonished at the
irregularity of the variation; for having observed the needle to vary a
whole point to the eastwards at night, it pointed directly northwards in