But In Magellan Strait We Are Violently Driven Back
Westward, Ergo Through The North-Western Strait Or Anian Frith Shall
We Not Be Able To Return Eastward:
It followeth not.
The first,
for that the north-western strait hath more sea room at the least by
one hundred English miles than Magellan's strait hath, the only want
whereof causeth all narrow passages generally to be most violent.
So would I say in the Anian Gulf, if it were so narrow as Don Diego
and Zalterius have painted it out, any return that way to be full of
difficulties, in respect of such straitness thereof, not for the
nearness of the sun or eastern winds, violently forcing that way any
Levant stream; but in that place there is more sea room by many
degrees, if the cards of Cabot and Gemma Frisius, and that which
Tramezine imprinted, be true.
And hitherto reasons see I none at all, but that I may as well give
credit unto their doings as to any of the rest. It must be
Peregrinationis historia, that is, true reports of skilful
travellers, as Ptolemy writeth, that in such controversies of
geography must put us out of doubt. Ortellius, in his universal
tables, in his particular maps of the West Indies, of all Asia, of
the northern kingdoms, of the East Indies; Mercator in some of his
globes and general maps of the world, Moletius in his universal
table of the Globe divided, in his sea-card and particular tables of
the East Indies Zanterius and Don Diego with Fernando Bertely, and
others, do so much differ both from Gemma Frisius and Cabot among
themselves, and in divers places from themselves, concerning the
divers situation and sundry limits of America, that one may not so
rashly as truly surmise these men either to be ignorant in those
points touching the aforesaid region, or that the maps they have
given out unto the world were collected only by them, and never of
their own drawing.
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