And Indeed It Seems As If Nature Had Formed This
Situation For The Direction Of Mariners, As Foreknowing Of What
Importance it should be, and how in future ages these seas should
be thus thronged with merchant-ships, the protection
Of whose
wealth, and the safety of the people navigating them, was so much
her early care that she stretched out the land so very many ways,
and extended the points and promontories so far and in so many
different places into the sea, that the land might be more easily
discovered at a due distance, which way soever the ships should
come.
Nor is the Lizard Point less useful (though not so far west) than
the other, which is more properly called the Land's End; but if we
may credit our mariners, it is more frequently first discovered
from the sea. For as our mariners, knowing by the soundings when
they are in the mouth of the Channel, do then most naturally stand
to the southward, to avoid mistaking the Channel, and to shun the
Severn Sea or Bristol Channel, but still more to avoid running upon
Scilly and the rocks about it, as is observed before--I say, as
they carefully keep to the southward till they think they are fair
with the Channel, and then stand to the northward again, or north-
east, to make the land, this is the reason why the Lizard is,
generally speaking, the first land they make, and not the Land's
End.
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