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.
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