Eco Umberto The Island of the Day Before

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the wind, the hour of the clock on board, the miles traveled, the height of the sun and of the stars, and
therefore the latitude, and from that they deduce a longitude. You will have seen sometimes at the poop a
sailor throwing a rope into the sea with a little piece of wood at-tached to one end. It is the loch or, as
some call it, the Dutch-man s log. The rope is let out, knotted at intervals for measurement, then with a
clock you can calculate how much time it takes to cover a given distance. In this way, if everything
proceeds regularly, you can determine how many miles you have sailed from the last known meridian.
You see? There is a method! Roberto said triumphantly, already knowing what the doctor would
reply. That the loch is something that is used only because there is nothing better, since it tells us how far
a ship has gone only if it is proceeding in a straight line. But since a ship goes as the winds choose, when
the winds are not favoring, it must move now to star-board, now to port.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the doctor said, more or less at the time of Mendana, in the Terranova region,
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intending to proceed along the forty-seventh parallel, encountered winds always so scant, winds how
shall I say it? so lazy and fru-gal, that for a long time he sailed anywhere between the forty-first and the
fifty-first, ranging over ten degrees of latitude, gentlemen, which would be as if an immense snake were to
go from Naples to Portugal, first touching Le Havre with its head and Rome with its tail, then finding itself
with its tail at Paris and its head at Madrid! So the deviations must be cal-culated before doing the sums,
and one must be very careful which a sailor never is. And you cannot have an astronomer ready at
your side all day long. To be sure, estimates are pos-sible, especially if you are following a familiar course
and con-sider all the discoveries previously made by others. For this reason from the shores of Europe to
those of the Americas the maps give meridians that are fairly reliable. And then, obser-vation of the stars
from land can produce some good results, and therefore we know the longitude of Lima. But even in this
case, my friends, the doctor asked gaily, what happens? And he looked slyly at the other two. It
happens that this gentleman, and he tapped a finger on one of the maps, places Rome on the twentieth
degree east of the meridian of the Canaries, whereas this other, and he waved his finger as if to
admonish paternally the other cartographer, this other gentleman sets Rome at the fortieth degree! And
this manu-script contains also the report of a very knowledgeable Flem-ing, who informs the King of
Spain that there has never been agreement on the distance between Rome and Toledo, por los errores
tan enormes, como se conoce por esta linea, que mues-tra la differencia de las distancias, et cetera et
cetera.... And here is the line: if you fix the first meridian at Toledo (the Spanish always think they live at
the center of the world), Mercator believes Rome is twenty degrees farther east, but for Tycho Brahe it is
twenty-two, and almost twenty-five for Re-giomontanus, and twenty-seven for Clavius, and twenty-eight
for good old Ptolemy, and for Origanus thirty. All these errors, just to measure the distance between
Rome and Toledo. Imag-ine what happens, then, on routes like this, where we are perhaps the first to
reach certain islands, and the reports of other travelers are quite vague. And add that if a Dutchman has
taken correct bearings, he will not tell them to the English, nor will they to the Spanish. On these seas the
captain s nose counts most, as with his poor loch he calculates, say, that he is on the
two-hundred-twentieth meridian, and perhaps he is thirty degrees ahead, or behind.
But then, the Knight suggested, the man who found a way of calculating the meridians would be
master of the oceans!
Byrd flushed again, stared to see if the Knight was speaking with some ulterior motive, and smiled, as if
he would have liked to bite him. Why do you not try, the two of you?
Alas, I give up, Roberto said, holding out his hands in a gesture of surrender. And that evening the
conversation ended amid hearty laughter.
For many days Roberto did not consider it wise to steer the conversation again to the question of
longitude. He changed the subject, and in order to do so he came to a brave decision. With his knife he
wounded the palm of one hand. Then he bandaged it with strips of a shirt now worn threadbare by water
and the winds. That evening he showed the wound to the doctor. I am truly foolish. I had put my knife in
my bag, unsheathed, and then as I was searching for something, I cut myself. And very painfully.
Dr. Byrd examined the wound with the eye of a specialist, while Roberto prayed he would bring a basin
of water to the table and dissolve some vitriol in it. Instead, Byrd merely said it did not seem serious and
that Roberto should cleanse it well every morning. But by a stroke of luck the Knight came to the rescue:
Ah, here what is needed is theunguentum armanum! [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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