All Which Learned Men And Painful Travellers Have Affirmed With One
Consent And Voice, That America Was An Island, And
That there lieth
a great sea between it, Cathay, and Greenland, by the which any man
of our country that
Will give the attempt, may with small danger
pass to Cathay, the Moluccas, India, and all other places in the
east in much shorter time than either the Spaniard or Portuguese
doth, or may do, from the nearest part of any of their countries
within Europe.
What moved these learned men to affirm thus much I know not, or to
what end so many and sundry travellers of both ages have allowed the
same; but I conjecture that they would never have so constantly
affirmed, or notified their opinions therein to the world, if they
had not had great good cause, and many probable reasons to have led
them thereunto.
Now lest you should make small account of ancient writers or of
their experiences which travelled long before our times, reckoning
their authority amongst fables of no importance, I have for the
better assurance of those proofs set down some part of a discourse,
written in the Saxon tongue, and translated into English by Master
Noel, servant to Master Secretary Cecil, wherein there is described
a navigation which one other made, in the time of King Alfred, King
of Wessex, Anne 871, the words of which discourse were these: "He
sailed right north, having always the desert land on the starboard,
and on the larboard the main sea, continuing his course, until he
perceived that the coast bowed directly towards the east or else the
sea opened into the land he could not tell how far, where he was
compelled to stay until he had a western wind or somewhat upon the
north, and sailed thence directly east along the coast, so far as he
was able in four days, where he was again enforced to tarry until he
had a north wind, because the coast there bowed directly towards the
south, or at least opened he knew not how far into the land, so that
he sailed thence along the coast continually full south, so far as
he could travel in the space of five days, where he discovered a
mighty river which opened far into the land, and in the entry of
this river he turned back again."
Whereby it appeareth that he went the very way that we now do yearly
trade by S. Nicholas into Muscovia, which way no man in our age knew
for certainty to be sea, until it was since discovered by our
Englishmen in the time of King Edward I., but thought before that
time that Greenland had joined to Normoria Byarmia, and therefore
was accounted a new discovery, being nothing so indeed, as by this
discourse of Ochther's it appeareth.
Nevertheless if any man should have taken this voyage in hand by the
encouragement of this only author, he should have been thought but
simple, considering that this navigation was written so many years
past, in so barbarous a tongue by one only obscure author, and yet
we in these our days find by our own experiences his former reports
to be true.
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