Page:Ancient Accounts of India and China.djvu/19

PREFACE. xv nor can any Thing be offered to juftify his Ignorance or Negligence as to the Longitude of St. John if Acre, or Ptokma~ is y which he writes to be in either 56, 57, 58, or 70 Degrees. When he gives you but one Number, it is becaufe he found no other in the Books he tranfcribed, the chief ofthefe Differences muff arifefrcm a dif- ference of Meridians ; for Mr. Renaudot after all he,in the Body of the Book y fays in their behalf as careful Observers and intelligent Mathematicians, muff be inccnfifient with himfelf to fuppofe thefe Numbers are mere Blunders and Inaccuracies. Abulfeda feems to be no more than a. ColleBor, as may be clearly gathered from that Prince's own Preface, and from what Mr. Renaudot here ac- knowledges. Uhat thefe various Longitudes are perplexing, every Body mujl allow, it being hard to determin which is to be preferred, as it is impoffible to find out the exact Meridian of each ; but that they are flips of Ignorance or Negligence cannot well be fuppofed. Befides, it is well known, '[that were any Man, like Abulfeda, to collef£ from our own befi Geographers, or rather Hydrographers, for what concerns the Sea-Coafi in particular, tho* fo well known to mofi of the European Navigators, they would be often found to vary a number of Degrees from each other ; we need only inftance in the Coafi of France, next to us, and the Coafi of Brafil in America, which now are thought to be rectified, as they doubtlefs are : But theft Variations did not arife from the want of a fixed Meridian, but purely from a mifiaken Reckoning or Computation. If fome of our befi Geographers then have till very lately abounded with Errors of this kind, it is fomewhat unreafonable to expeB the Orientals to be quite free from them ; and as they fay, The Know- ledge of a Part, is to be preferred to an Ignorance of the Whole ; fo if we can to a Degree or two fettle upon the Longitude of mop of the noted Cities in the mufi be fomewhat more fatisfathry than not to know where to look for them at all. but it is never the furer for that ; he himfelf does not
 * uafi extent of Afia, which might perhaps be done, it