At length the summit of the towering mast
Alone is seen; nor less, when from the ship
The longing sailor’s eye in hope of shore:
For then, from the top-mast, though more remote
Than either deck, the shore is first beheld.”[128]
2. Navigators sailing round the globe, as Magellan, Drake, Lord Anson, Cook, and others, have steered their course directly south and west till they came to the Magellanic sea, and from thence to the north and west, till they returned to their port from the east; and all the phenomena which should naturally arise from the earth’s rotundity, happened to them. Beside, their method of sailing was also founded upon this hypothesis, which could not have succeeded so happily, if the earth had been of any other figure. 3. In all lunar eclipses, the shadow of the earth falling upon the moon is always circular; and a body can be no other than a globe, which in all situations casts a circular shadow. It is true, the surface of the earth is not an exact geometrical globe: but what the earth loses of its sphericity by its inequalities, as writers on this subject have remarked, is very inconsiderable: the highest mountains bearing so little proportion to its bulk, as scarcely to be equivalent to the minutest protuberance on the surface of an orange, or a grain of dust to a common globe.
“These inequalities to us seem great;
But to an eye that comprehends the whole,
The tumor, which to us so monstrous seems,
Is as a grain of sparkling sand that clings