Nevertheless, To Approve That There Lieth A Way To Cathay At The
North-West From Out Of Europe, We Have Experience, Namely Of Three
Brethren That Went That Journey, As Gemma Frisius Recordeth, And
Left A Name Unto That Strait, Whereby Now It Is Called Fretum Trium
Fratrum.
We do read again of a Portuguese that passed this strait,
of whom Master Frobisher speaketh, that was imprisoned therefore
many years in Lisbon, to verify the old Spanish proverb, "I suffer
for doing well." Likewise, An.
Urdaneta, a friar of Mexico, came
out of Mare del Sur this way into Germany; his card, for he was a
great discoverer, made by his own experience and travel in that
voyage, hath been seen by gentlemen of good credit.
Now if the observation and remembrance of things breedeth
experience, and of experience proceedeth art, and the certain
knowledge we have in all faculties, as the best philosophers that
ever were do affirm truly the voyage of these aforesaid travellers
that have gone out of Europe into Mare del Sur, and returned thence
at the north-west, do most evidently conclude that way to be
navigable, and that passage free; so much the more we are so to
think, for that the first principle and chief ground in all
geography, as Ptolemy saith, is the history of travel, that is,
reports made by travellers skilful in geography and astronomy, of
all such things in their journey as to geography do belong. It only
remaineth, that we now answer to those arguments that seemed to make
against this former conclusion.
The first objection is of no force, that general table of the world,
set forth by Ortellius or Mercator, for it greatly skilleth not,
being unskilfully drawn for that point, as manifestly it may appear
unto any one that compareth the same with Gemma Frisius' universal
map, with his round quartered card, with his globe, with Sebastian
Cabot's table, and Ortellius' general map alone, worthily preferred
in this case before all Mercator's and Ortellius' other doings: for
that Cabot was not only a skilful seaman, but a long traveller, and
such a one as entered personally that strait, sent by King Henry
VII. to make this aforesaid discovery, as in his own discourse of
navigation you may read in his card drawn with his own hand, that
the mouth of the north-western strait lieth near the 318th meridian,
between 61 and 64 degrees in the elevation, continuing the same
breadth about ten degrees west, where it openeth southerly more and
more, until it come under the tropic of Cancer; and so runneth into
Mare del Sur, at the least 18 degrees more in breadth there than it
was where it first began; otherwise I could as well imagine this
passage to be more unlikely than the voyage to Moscovy, and more
impossible than it for the far situation and continuance thereof in
the frosty clime: as now I can affirm it to be very possible and
most likely in comparison thereof, for that it neither coasteth so
far north as the Moscovian passage doth, neither is this strait so
long as that, before it bow down southerly towards the sun again.
The second argument concludeth nothing. Ptolemy knew not what was
above 16 degrees south beyond the equinoctial line, he was ignorant
of all passages northward from the elevation of 63 degrees, he knew
no ocean sea beyond Asia, yet have the Portuguese trended the Cape
of Good Hope at the south point of Africa, and travelled to Japan,
an island in the east ocean, between Asia and America; our merchants
in the time of King Edward the Sixth discovered the Moscovian
passage farther north than Thule, and showed Greenland not to be
continent with Lapland and Norway: the like our north-western
travellers have done, declaring by their navigation that way the
ignorance of all cosmographers that either do join Greenland with
America, or continue the West Indies with that frosty region under
the North Pole. As for Virgil, he sang according to the knowledge
of men in his time, as another poet did of the hot zone.
Quarum quae media est, non est habitabilis aestu. Imagining, as
most men then did, Zonam Torridam, the hot zone, to be altogether
dishabited for heat, though presently we know many famous and worthy
kingdoms and cities in that part of the earth, and the island of S.
Thomas near Ethiopia, and the wealthy islands for the which chiefly
all these voyages are taken in hand, to be inhabited even under the
equinoctial line.
To answer the third objection, besides Cabot and all other
travellers' navigations, the only credit of Master Frobisher may
suffice, who lately, through all these islands of ice and mountains
of snow, passed that way, even beyond the gulf that tumbleth down
from the north, and in some places, though he drew one inch thick
ice, as he returning in August did, came home safely again.
The fourth argument is altogether frivolous and vain, for neither is
there any isthmus or strait of land between America and Asia, nor
can these two lands jointly be one continent. The first part of my
answer is manifestly allowed by Homer, whom that excellent
geographer, Strabo, followeth, yielding him in this faculty the
prize. The author of that book likewise On the Universe to
Alexander, attributed unto Aristotle, is of the same opinion that
Homer and Strabo be of, in two or three places. Dionysius, in his
Periegesis, hath this verse, "So doeth the ocean sea run round about
the world:" speaking only of Europe, Africa, and Asia, as then Asia
was travelled and known. With these doctors may you join Pomponius
Mela, Pliny, Pius, in his description of Asia. All the which
writers do no less confirm the whole eastern side of Asia to be
compassed about with the sea; then Plato doth affirm in is Timaeus,
under the name Atlantis, the West Indies to be an island, as in a
special discourse thereof R. Eden writeth, agreeable unto the
sentence of Proclus, Marsilius Ficinus, and others.
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