for the natural motion of the sun through the ecliptic) the same, or nearly the same temperature, excepting such differences as are caused by certain vertical stars and the various form, arrangement, and temperament of the land, from which it occurs that in the hottest part of a zone there are some spots very temperate and cool. And thus in those zones which are generally cold, there are some parts which are milder and very free from the severity of the cold. And if particular consideration be given to the influences produced on temperature by the constellations belonging to the southern hemisphere, it will be found that there are lands in it, not only as habitable, but much more so than in the other hemisphere; and it has been seen by experience, from the discoveries which have been made in that half of the torrid zone which is south of the equator, that whereas the ancients considered its heat to be so excessive that it was utterly uninhabitable, there have been found in it parts as habitable and of as mild a temperature as in the most temperate and habitable parts of Spain. This has been shown in the country of the Baia de Sanfelipe y Santiago, discovered by captain Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, which is very near to the middle of the southern half of the torrid zone, where, in the month of May, was found the same mildness of temperature, the same songs of birds in the twilight, the same agreeableness and delight in the softness of the air, as is found in Spain in the mildest and most refreshing season of spring. And although, in the middle of the time that they were in the bay, the sun went down about twenty degrees to the north, which, together with the fifteen or twenty minutes of the latitude of the bay, made their distance from the sun, which was in the south of the zenith, little more than twenty-five degrees, and thus fifty-five of southern altitude; yet was the temperature extremely mild for a situation so near to the middle of the southern half of the torrid zone. But in other islands which they discovered in the same southern half of the torrid zone, when the sun stood in southern signs for January, February, and March, being vertical or very near the vertex or zenith of those islands, there was not felt greater heat there than in our summer, nor, indeed, did there appear to have been so much on those occasions when they went on shore for the purpose of taking in water.