Page 377
An.1687
The necessity of allowing for change of Time.
Indies, we found themreckoning a day before us, both Natives and Europeans; for the Europeans com- ing Eastward by the Cape of Good Hope, in a course contrary to the Sun and us, where-ever we met they were a full day before us in their Ac- counts. So among the Indian Mahometans here, their Friday, the day of their Sultans going to their Mosques, was Thursday with us; though it were Friday also with those who came Eastward from Europe. Yet at the Ladrone Islands, we found the Spaniards of Guam keeping the same computation with our selves; the reason of which I take to be, that they settled that Colony by a course Westward from Spain; the Spaniards going first to America, and thence to the Ladrones and Philippines. But how the reckoning was at Manila, and the rest of the Spanish Colonies in the Philippine Islands, I know not: whether they keep it as they brought it, or corrected it by the Accounts of the Natives, and of the Portuguese, Dutch and English, coming the contrary way from Europe.
One great reason why Seamen ought to keep the difference of time as exact as they can, is, that they may be the more exact in their Longitude. For our Tables of the Suns declination, being cal- culated for the Meridians of the places in which they were made, differ about 12 minutes from those parts of the World, that lie on their oppo- site Meridians, in the months of March and Sep- tember; and in proportion to the Suns declination, at other times of the year also. And should they run farther as we did, the difference would still in- crease upon them, and be an occasion of great er- rours. Yet even able Seamen in these Voyages are hardly made sensible of this, tho so necessary to be observed, for want of duly attending to the reason of it, as it happened among those of our crew; who after we had past 180 degrees, began to