It May, Peradventure, Be Thought That This Course Of The Sea Doth
Sometime Surcease And Thereby Impugn This Principle, Because It Is
Not Discerned All Along The Coast Of America In Such Sort As Jacques
Cartier Found It, Whereunto I Answer This:
That albeit in every
part of the coast of America or elsewhere this current is not
sensibly perceived, yet
It hath evermore such like motion, either
the uppermost or nethermost part of the sea; as it may be proved
true, if you sink a sail by a couple of ropes near the ground,
fastening to the nethermost corners two gun chambers or other
weights, by the driving whereof you shall plainly perceive the
course of the water and current running with such like course in the
bottom. By the like experiment you may find the ordinary motion of
the sea in the ocean, how far soever you be off the land.
9. Also, there cometh another current from out the north-east from
the Scythian Sea (as Master Jenkinson, a man of rare virtue, great
travel, and experience, told me), which runneth westward towards
Labrador, as the other did which cometh from the south; so that both
these currents must have way through this our strait, or else
encounter together and run contrary courses in one line, but no such
conflicts of streams or contrary courses are found about any part of
Labrador or Newfoundland, as witness our yearly fishers and other
sailors that way, but is there separated as aforesaid, and found by
the experience of Barnarde de la Torre to fall into Mare del Sur.
10. Furthermore, the current in the great ocean could not have been
maintained to run continually one way from the beginning of the
world unto this day, had there not been some through passage by the
strait aforesaid, and so by circular motion be brought again to
maintain itself, for the tides and courses of the sea are maintained
by their interchangeable motions, as fresh rivers are by springs, by
ebbing and flowing, by rarefaction and condensation.
So that it resteth not possible (so far as my simple reason can
comprehend) that this perpetual current can by any means be
maintained, but only by a continual reaccess of the same water,
which passeth through the strait, and is brought about thither again
by such circular motion as aforesaid, and the certain falling
thereof by this strait into Mare del Sur is proved by the testimony
and experience of Barnarde de la Torre, who was sent from P. de la
Natividad to the Moluccas, 1542, by commandment of Anthony Mendoza,
then Viceroy of Nova Hispania, which Barnarde sailed 750 leagues on
the north side of the Equator, and there met with a current which
came from the north-east, the which drove him back again to Tidore.
Wherefore this current being proved to come from the Cape of Good
Hope to the strait of Magellan, and wanting sufficient entrance
there, is by the necessity of Nature's force brought to Terra de
Labrador, where Jacques Cartier met the same, and thence certainly
known not to strike over upon Iceland, Lapland, etc., and found by
Barnarde de la Torre, in Mare del Sur, on the backside of America,
therefore this current, having none other passage, must of necessity
fall out through this strait into Mare del Sur, and so trending by
the Moluccas, China, and the Cape of Good Hope, maintaineth itself
by circular motion, which is all one in Nature with motus ab oriente
in occidentem.
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