[112] The Azores or Western Islands, about eight hundred miles west of Portugal, lie in an oblique line, northwest and southeast, between 36° 50´ and 39° 50´ north latitude and 24° 30´ and 31° 20´ west longitude. The Azores, frequently called Terceiras, were discovered in 1439 by Josua van der Berg, a Flemish merchant, who was carried in his ship to them in a storm. They were named Açores from the number of goshawks found on them. They were not inhabited when discovered. [113] The Cape Verd Islands, three hundred and twenty miles west of Cape Verd on the west coast of Africa, lie between 14° 45´ and 17° 13´ north latitude and between 22° 45´ and 25° 25’ west longitude. [114] Claudius Ptolemæus, an Egyptian astronomer and geographer, lived, in the second century at Alexandria. His System of Geography, (Γεωγραφική Ἀφήγησις,) contained in eight books, was a standard work for fourteen centuries. During the first part of the sixteenth century twenty-one editions of the geography, with editions and emendations, were published. According to Ptolemy, all the known part of the earth, from the first meridian, or the Canary Islands, eastwardly, on the parallel of Rhodes, measured seventy-two thousand stadia, or one hundred and eighty degrees, which he deemed to be the half of the circumference of the globe. But the extent he was acquainted with was really measured by one hundred and twenty degrees, which made the circumference one third less than it is. Marinus of Tyre, a Greek geographer, lived about 150 A.D. This cosmographer supposed that the country of the Seres, or Sinae (China), the farthest part of India known to the ancients, was fifteen hours, by the course of the sun, or two hundred and twenty-five degrees east of the first meridian passing through the Fortunate (Canary) Islands. According to our present geographical measurements, the distance given by Marinus was not more than one hundred and thirty degrees, leaving two hundred and thirty the remaining distance from China eastwardly to the Canary Islands. Following the deductions of Marinus, there were only one hundred and thirty-five degrees of distance between China, going eastwardly, and the Fortunate Islands. [115] “Marinus, the Tyrian, misled by the length of time occupied in the navigation from Myos Hormos to India, by the erroneously assumed direction of the major axis of the Caspian from west to east, and by the over-estimation of the length of the land route to the country of the Seres, gave the old continent a breadth of 225°, instead of 129°. The Chinese coast was thus advanced to the Sandwich Islands. Columbus naturally preferred this result to that of Ptolemy, according to which Quinsay should have been found in the meridian of the eastern part of the archipelago of the Carolinas. Ptolemy, in the Almagest (ii. 1), places the coast of Sinae at 180°, and in his Geography (lib. i. cap. 12) at 177¼°.”—Humboldt: Cosmos. Otté’s trans. vol. ii. p. 645. Note.