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. 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
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