Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/564

 north. And the longitude, in which are also counted other 360, is counted from west to east or from east to west, as in the Card is set.

The sayd latitude your Lordship may see marked and divided in the ende of this Card on the left hand, so that if you would know in what degrees of latitude any region or coast standeth, take a compasse, and set the one foot of the same in the Equinoctial line, right against the said region, and apply the other foote of the compasse to the said region or coast, and then set the sayd compasse at the end of the Card, where the degrees are divided. And the one foote of the compasse standing in the line Equinoctial, the other will show in the scale the degrees of altitude or latitude that the said region is in. Also the longitude of the world I have set out in the nether part of the Card, containing also 360 degrees which begin to be counted after Ptoleme and other Cosmographers from an headland called Capo Verde, which is over against a little crosse, made in the part occidental, where the division of the degrees beginneth, and endeth in the same Capo Verde.

Now to know in what longitude any land is, your Lordship must take a ruler or a compasse, and set the one foot of the compasse upon the land or coast whose longitude you would know, and extend the other foot of the compasse to the next part of one of the transversal lines in the Oriental or Occidental part: which done, set the one foot of the compass in the said transversal line at the end of the nether scale, the scale of longitude, and the other foot sheweth the degree of longitude that the region is in. And your Lordship must understand that this Card, though little, containeth the universal whole world betwixt two collaterall lines, the one in the occidentall part descendeth perpendicular upon the 175th degree, and the other in the orientall on the 170th degree, whose distance measureth the scale of longitude. And that which is without the two said tranversall lines, is onely to show how the Orientall part is joined with the Occident, and Occident with the Orient, for that that is set without the line in the Oriental part, is the same that is set within the other line in the Occidentall part; and that that is set without the line in the Occidental part, is the same that is set within the line in the Orientall part, to show that though this figure of the world in plaine or flatte seemeth to have an end, yet one imagining that this said Card were set upon a round thing, where the endes should touch by the lines, it would plainely appeare howe the Orient part