. He sailed from Aden to Calicut in thirty days, and in
eighty-three days from Calicut to Zaumotra (Sumatra), a distance of
about fourteen hundred leagues. "With this number agree Marco Paulo
(Marco Polo) and Juan de Mandevilla (John Mandeville) in the self-same
voyages and travels made by them, as is stated very diffusely in their
books." The three-year voyage of King Solomon's ships, as recorded in
"the third book of the Kings" [187] to "Ofir and Zetin whence they
brought the gold to build the Temple," and which places "all writers
upon the sacred scriptures assert" to be "toward the most eastern
part of India," agree with the same figures.] From all the above,
therefore it is inferred that the navigation from the said Mar Rubro
[Red Sea] to the eastern part of India is a much greater distance
than the Portuguese say.

_Item:_ it is well-known that the Portuguese themselves confessed that
the said Maluco islands were so far to the eastward that they fell
within their Majesties' territories. And this was so apparent that one
of the deputies acting now in this cause for the said King, by name
Master Margallo, in a philosophical book written by him, and but lately
out of press, in showing the division between Castilla and Portugal,
proves that the said Malucos fall and are within their Majesties'
limits. And too, when they were discovered by the Castilian fleet,
the King of Portugal desiring to have information regarding their
location and boundary, considered himself perfectly assured when all
those whom he ordered to assemble for this purpose concluded that they
lay within the Castilian boundaries. And therefore the more than great
caution exercised up to that time in not permitting sea charts to be
taken from his realms was thereafter observed much more strictly,
and many maps were burned, destroyed, and seized, and an order was
sent forth that the routes in all maps should be shortened. And those
maps they do give out for purposes of navigation, to those who must
sail toward India, they give on account, so that they must be returned
to the treasury in order that there might be no information in other
places as to the longitude of this route. And all the abovesaid is
confirmed more clearly, because, notwithstanding the great caution
exercised in Portugal in not allowing maps to be taken outside of the
kingdom, certain Portuguese and Castilians have taken and possessed
some maps. We, the said deputies of their Majestie