the presence and hearing of all the burghers of Thalassa, who had flocked
to the mole to see them take shipping. After the prayers was melodiously
sung a psalm of the holy King David, which begins, When Israel went out of
Egypt; and that being ended, tables were placed upon deck, and a feast
speedily served up. The Thalassians, who had also borne a chorus in the
psalm, caused store of belly-timber to be brought out of their houses. All
drank to them; they drank to all; which was the cause that none of the
whole company gave up what they had eaten, nor were sea-sick, with a pain
at the head and stomach; which inconveniency they could not so easily have
prevented by drinking, for some time before, salt water, either alone or
mixed with wine; using quinces, citron peel, juice of pomegranates, sourish
sweetmeats, fasting a long time, covering their stomachs with paper, or
following such other idle remedies as foolish physicians prescribe to those
that go to sea.

Having often renewed their tipplings, each mother's son retired on board
his own ship, and set sail all so fast with a merry gale at south-east; to
which point of the compass the chief pilot, James Brayer by name, had
shaped his course, and fixed all things accordingly. For seeing that the
Oracle of the Holy Bottle lay near Cathay, in the Upper India, his advice,
and that of Xenomanes also, was not to steer the course which the
Portuguese use, while sailing through the torrid zone, and Cape Bona
Speranza, at the south point of Africa, beyond the equinoctial line, and
losing sight of the northern pole, their guide, they make a prodigious long
voyage; but rather to keep as near the parallel of the said India as
possible, and to tack to the westward of the said pole, so that winding
under the north, they might find themselves in the latitude of the port of
Olone, without coming nearer it for fear of being shut up in the frozen
sea; whereas, following this canonical turn, by the said parallel, they
must have that on the right to the eastward, which at their departure was