The Same Opinion, When Learning
Chiefly Flourished, Was Received In The Romans' Time, As By Their
Poets' Writings It May Appear.
"Et te colet ultima Thule," said
Virgil, being of opinion that Iceland was the extreme part of the
world habitable toward the north.
Joseph Moletius, an Italian, and
Mercator, a German, for knowledge men able to be compared with the
best geographers of our time, the one in his half spheres of the
whole world, the other in some of his great globes, have continued
the West Indies land, even to the North Pole, and consequently cut
off all passage by sea that way.
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.
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