Austins and The Moon by Night, and is the setting of A Ring of Endless Light. Seven Bay is reached by ferry, and is said to be the third and last stop on the ferry's outbound route. Vespugia – the fictional country in South America, first mentioned in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, is visited by Vicky Austin in Troubling a Star, en route to Antarctica. It is shown as having at least one step pyramid. More important to the book and the L'Engle corpus, Vespugia by the time Vicky arrives is no longer governed by El Zarco (Madoc Branzillo), the benign leader who replaced evil "Mad Dog" through the efforts of Charles Wallace. Instead, General Guedder (a descendant of the malevolent Gedder from A Swiftly Tilting Planet) has established a totalitarian regime, funded in part by international trade in illegal drugs. Guedder's Vespugia hopes to gain power in the world community by controlling and exploiting as much of Antarctica as possible. The name references the explorer Amerigo Vespucci, after whom the American continents were named. It is evidently a small country, "very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter" located between Chile and Argentina, who have been "nibbling" at Vespugia's borders for centuries. The Spanish Inquisition was once powerful there, torturing and killing the native Indians and destroying native religious sites and artifacts. Eddington Point, Antarctica – the fictional location of LeNoir Station, a small scientific research station staffed primarily by Americans in Troubling a Star. Eddington Point was named after Adam Eddington's uncle and namesake, a marine biologist who was murdered in Antarctica. The younger Adam is stationed there in Troubling a Star, but is mysteriously absent when Vicky arrives. Other significant places In addition to the many fictional locations, L'Engle has set parts of her novels in a number of real places, including the following: Athens, Greece - where Polly meets Zachary Gray in A House Like a Lotus. Beja, Portugal - where Charlotte Napier flees during a crisis in her marriage and reads the Letters of a Portuguese Nun in L'Engle's adult novel The Love Letters (1966). Lisbon, Portugal - where Adam Eddington rescues Polly O'Keefe but gets ensnared by the Cutters in The Arm of the Starfish. Madrid, Spain - where the plane that carried Adam Eddington, Canon Tallis, and Polly is temporarily stranded in The Arm of the Starfish. New York City