Note 103 — Chapter II · 1295-1487.

“I find the first mention of the application of the log in a passage of Pigafetta’s journal of Magellan’s voyage of circumnavigation, which long lay buried among the manuscripts in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. It is there said that in the month of January, 1521, when Magellan had already arrived in the Pacific, ‘Seconda la misura che facevamo del viaggio colla catena a poppa noi percorrevamo da 60 in 70 leghe al giorno,’ [following the measure which we made of our progress with the chain at the stern, we ran from sixty to seventy leagues a day]. (Amoretti. Primo Viaggio intorno al Globo terracqueo ossia Navigazione fatta dal Cavaliere Antonio Pigafetta sulla squadra del Magaglianes, 1800. p. 46.) What can this arrangement of a chain at the hinder part of the ship (catena a poppa), ‘which we used throughout the entire voyage to measure the way,’ have been except an apparatus similar to our log?”—Humboldt: Cosmos. Otté’s trans. vol. ii. p. 633.