How Much More, Then, Ought We To Believe This Passage To Cathay To
Be, Being Verified By The Opinions Of
All the best, both antique and
modern geographers, and plainly set out in the best and most allowed
maps, charts,
Globes, cosmographical tables, and discourses of this
our age and by the rest not denied, but left as a matter doubtful.
CHAPTER II.
1. All seas are maintained by the abundance of water, so that the
nearer the end any river, bay, or haven is, the shallower it waxeth
(although by some accidental bar it is sometime found otherwise),
but the farther you sail west from Iceland, towards the place where
this strait is thought to be, the more deep are the seas, which
giveth us good hope of continuance of the same sea, with Mare del
Sur, by some strait that lieth between America, Greenland, and
Cathay.
2. Also, if that America were not an island, but a part of the
continent adjoining to Asia, either the people which inhabit Mangia,
Anian, and Quinzay, etc., being borderers upon it, would before this
time have made some road into it, hoping to have found some like
commodities to their own.
3. Or else the Syrians and Tartars (which oftentimes heretofore
have sought far and near for new seats, driven thereunto through the
necessity of their cold and miserable countries) would in all this
time have found the way to America and entered the same had the
passages been never so strait or difficult, the country being so
temperate, pleasant, and fruitful in comparison of their own. But
there was never any such people found there by any of the Spaniards,
Portuguese, or Frenchmen, who first discovered the inland of that
country, which Spaniards or Frenchmen must then of necessity have
seen some one civilised man in America, considering how full of
civilised people Asia is; but they never saw so much as one token or
sign that ever any man of the known part of the world had been
there.
4. Furthermore, it is to be thought, that if by reason of mountains
or other craggy places the people neither of Cathay or Tartary could
enter the country of America, or they of America have entered Asia
if it were so joined, yet some one savage or wandering-beast would
in so many years have passed into it; but there hath not any time
been found any of the beasts proper to Cathay or Tartary, etc., in
America; nor of those proper to America in Tartary, Cathay, etc., or
in any part of Asia, which thing proveth America not only to be one
island, and in no part adjoining to Asia, but also that the people
of those countries have not had any traffic with each other.
5. Moreover at the least some one of those painful travellers which
of purpose have passed the confines of both countries, with intent
only to discover, would, as it is most likely, have gone from the
one to the other, if there had been any piece of land, or isthmus,
to have joined them together, or else have declared some cause to
the contrary.
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