League (unit)

English usage also included many of the other leagues mentioned below (for example, in discussing the Treaty of Tordesillas).

[4] It is this unit that is referenced in both the title and the body text of Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870).

[6] In Portugal, Brazil and other parts of the former Portuguese Empire, there were several units called league (Portuguese: légua): The names of the several léguas referred to the number of units that made the length corresponding to an angle degree of a meridian arc.

[7] This varied depending on local standards for the pie (Spanish foot) and on the precision of measurement, but was officially equivalent to 4,180 metres (2.6 miles) before the legua was abolished by Philip II in 1568.

In the early Hispanic settlements of New Mexico, Texas, California, and Colorado, a league was also a unit of area, defined as 25 million square varas or about 4,428.4 acres.