Hath been reserved for some noble prince or worthy man, thereby to
make himself rich, and the world happy: desiring you to accept in
good part this brief and simple discourse, written in haste, which,
if I may perceive that it shall not sufficiently satisfy you in this
behalf, I will then impart unto you a large discourse, which I have
written only of this discovery.
And further, because it sufficeth not only to knew that such a thing
there is, without ability to perform the same, I will at leisure
make you partaker of another simple discourse of navigation, wherein
I have not a little travelled, to make myself as sufficient to bring
these things to effect as I have been ready to offer myself therein.
And therein I have devised to amend the errors of usual sea-cards,
whose common fault is to make the degrees of longitude in every
latitude of one like bigness.
And have also devised therein a spherical instrument, with a compass
of variation for the perfect knowing of the longitude.
And a precise order to prick the sea-card, together with certain
infallible rules for the shortening of any discovery, to know at the
first entering of any strait whether it lies open to the ocean more
ways than one, how far soever the sea stretcheth itself into the
land.
