The Same Doctors, Mercator In Other Of His Globes And Maps, Moletius
In His Sea-Card, Nevertheless Doubting Of So
Great continuance of
the former continent, have opened a gulf betwixt the West Indies and
the extreme northern land; but
Such a one that either is not to be
travelled for the causes in the first objection alleged, or clean
shut up from us in Europe by Greenland, the south end whereof
Moletius maketh firm land with America, the north part continent
with Lapland and Norway.
Thirdly, the greatest favourers of this voyage cannot deny but that,
if any such passage be, it lieth subject unto ice and snow for the
most part of the year, whereas it standeth in the edge of the frosty
zone. Before the sun hath warmed the air and dissolved the ice,
each one well knoweth that there can be no sailing; the ice once
broken through the continual abode, the sun maketh a certain season
in those parts. How shall it be possible for so weak a vessel as a
ship is to hold out amid whole islands, as it were, of ice
continually beating on each side, and at the mouth of that gulf,
issuing down furiously from the north, safely to pass, when whole
mountains of ice and snow shall be tumbled down upon her?
Well, grant the West Indies not to continue continent unto the Pole,
grant there be a passage between these two lands, let the gulf lie
nearer us than commonly in cards we find it set, namely, between the
sixty-first and sixty-fourth degrees north, as Gemma Frisius in his
maps and globes imagineth it, and so left by our countryman
Sebastian Cabot in his table which the Earl of Bedford hath at
Theinies; let the way be void of all difficulties, yet doth it not
follow that we have free passage to Cathay. For example's sake, you
may coast all Norway, Finmarke, and Lapland, and then bow southward
to St. Nicholas, in Moscovy. You may likewise in the Mediterranean
Sea fetch Constantinople and the mouth of the Don, yet is there no
passage by sea through Moscovy into Pont Euxine, now called Mare
Maggiore. Again, in the aforesaid Mediterranean Sea we sail to
Alexandria in Egypt, the barbarians bring their pearl and spices
from the Moluccas up the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf to Suez, scarcely
three days' journey from the aforesaid haven; yet have we no way by
sea from Alexandria to the Moluccas for that isthmus or little trait
of land between the two seas. In like manner, although the northern
passage be free at sixty-one degrees latitude, and the west ocean
beyond America, usually called Mare del Sur, known to be open at
forty degrees elevation for the island of Japan, yea, three hundred
leagues northerly of Japan, yet may there be land to hinder the
through passage that way by sea, as in the examples aforesaid it
falleth out, Asia and America there being joined together in one
continent. Nor can this opinion seem altogether frivolous unto any
one that diligently peruseth our cosmographers' doings. Josephus
Moletius is of that mind, not only in his plain hemispheres of the
world, but also in his sea-card. The French geographers in like
manner be of the same opinion, as by their map cut out in form of a
heart you may perceive as though the West Indies were part of Asia,
which sentence well agreeth with that old conclusion in the schools,
Quid-quid praeter Africum et Europam est, Asia est, "Whatsoever land
doth neither appertain unto Africa nor to Europe is part of Asia."
Furthermore, it were to small purpose to make so long, so painful,
so doubtful a voyage by such a new found way, if in Cathay you
should neither be suffered to land for silks and silver, nor able to
fetch the Molucca spices and pearl for piracy in those seas. Of a
law denying all aliens to enter into China, and forbidding all the
inhabiters under a great penalty to let in any stranger into those
countries, shall you read in the report of Galeotto Petera, there
imprisoned with other Portuguese, as also in the Japanese letters,
how for that cause the worthy traveller Xavierus bargained with a
barbarian merchant for a great sum of pepper to be brought into
Canton, a port in Cathay. The great and dangerous piracy used in
those seas no man can be ignorant of that listeth to read the
Japanese and Indian history.
Finally, all this great labour would be lost, all these charges
spent in vain, if in the end our travellers might not be able to
return again, and bring safely home into their own native country
that wealth and riches they in foreign regions with adventure of
goods and danger of their lives have sought for. By the north-east
there is no way; the South-East Passage the Portuguese do hold, as
the lords of those seas. At the south-west, Magellan's experience
hath partly taught us, and partly we are persuaded by reason, how
the eastern current striketh so furiously on that strait, and
falleth with such force into that narrow gulf, that hardly any ship
can return that way into our west ocean out of Mare del Sur. The
which, if it be true, as truly it is, then we may say that the
aforesaid eastern current, or Levant course of waters, continually
following after the heavenly motions, loseth not altogether its
force, but is doubled rather by another current from out the north-
east, in the passage between America and the North Land, whither it
is of necessity carried, having none other way to maintain itself in
circular motion, and consequently the force and fury thereof to be
no less in the Strait of Anian, where it striketh south into Mare
del Sur beyond America (if any such strait of sea there be), than in
the strait of Magellan, both straits being of like breadth, as in
Belognine Salterius' table of "New France," and in Don Diego Hermano
de Toledo's card for navigation in that region, we do find precisely
set down.
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