Nevertheless If Any Man Should Have Taken This Voyage In Hand By The
Encouragement Of This Only Author, He Should
Have been thought but
simple, considering that this navigation was written so many years
past, in so barbarous a tongue
By one only obscure author, and yet
we in these our days find by our own experiences his former reports
to be true.
How much more, then, ought we to believe this passage to Cathay to
be, being verified by the opinions of all the best, both antique and
modern geographers, and plainly set out in the best and most allowed
maps, charts, globes, cosmographical tables, and discourses of this
our age and by the rest not denied, but left as a matter doubtful.
CHAPTER II.
1. All seas are maintained by the abundance of water, so that the
nearer the end any river, bay, or haven is, the shallower it waxeth
(although by some accidental bar it is sometime found otherwise),
but the farther you sail west from Iceland, towards the place where
this strait is thought to be, the more deep are the seas, which
giveth us good hope of continuance of the same sea, with Mare del
Sur, by some strait that lieth between America, Greenland, and
Cathay.
2. Also, if that America were not an island, but a part of the
continent adjoining to Asia, either the people which inhabit Mangia,
Anian, and Quinzay, etc., being borderers upon it, would before this
time have made some road into it, hoping to have found some like
commodities to their own.
3. Or else the Syrians and Tartars (which oftentimes heretofore
have sought far and near for new seats, driven thereunto through the
necessity of their cold and miserable countries) would in all this
time have found the way to America and entered the same had the
passages been never so strait or difficult, the country being so
temperate, pleasant, and fruitful in comparison of their own. But
there was never any such people found there by any of the Spaniards,
Portuguese, or Frenchmen, who first discovered the inland of that
country, which Spaniards or Frenchmen must then of necessity have
seen some one civilised man in America, considering how full of
civilised people Asia is; but they never saw so much as one token or
sign that ever any man of the known part of the world had been
there.
4. Furthermore, it is to be thought, that if by reason of mountains
or other craggy places the people neither of Cathay or Tartary could
enter the country of America, or they of America have entered Asia
if it were so joined, yet some one savage or wandering-beast would
in so many years have passed into it; but there hath not any time
been found any of the beasts proper to Cathay or Tartary, etc., in
America; nor of those proper to America in Tartary, Cathay, etc., or
in any part of Asia, which thing proveth America not only to be one
island, and in no part adjoining to Asia, but also that the people
of those countries have not had any traffic with each other.
5. Moreover at the least some one of those painful travellers which
of purpose have passed the confines of both countries, with intent
only to discover, would, as it is most likely, have gone from the
one to the other, if there had been any piece of land, or isthmus,
to have joined them together, or else have declared some cause to
the contrary.
6. But neither Paulus Venetus, who lived and dwelt a long time in
Cathay, ever came into America, and yet was at the sea coasts of
Mangia over against it, where he was embarked and performed a great
navigation along those seas; neither yet Veratzanus or Franciscus
Vasquez de Coronado, who travelled the north part of America by
land, ever found entry from thence by land to Cathay, or any part of
Asia.
7. Also it appeareth to be an island, insomuch as the sea runneth
by nature circularly from the east to the west, following the
diurnal motion of the Primum Mobile, and carrieth with it all
inferior bodies movable, as well celestial as elemental; which
motion of the waters is most evidently seen in the sea, which lieth
on the south side of Africa, where the current that runneth from the
east to the west is so strong (by reason of such motion) that the
Portuguese in their voyages eastward to Calicut, in passing by the
Cape of Good Hope, are enforced to make divers courses, the current
there being so swift, as it striketh from thence, all along
westward, upon the straits of Magellan, being distant from thence
near the fourth part of the longitude of the earth: and not having
free passage and entrance through that frith towards the west, by
reason of the narrowness of the said strait of Magellan, it runneth
to salve this wrong (Nature not yielding to accidental restraints)
all along the eastern coasts of America northwards so far as Cape
Frido, being the farthest known place of the same continent towards
the north, which is about four thousand eight-hundred leagues,
reckoning therewithal the trending of the land.
8. So that this current, being continually maintained with such
force as Jacques Cartier affirmeth it to be, who met with the same,
being at Baccalaos as he sailed along the coasts of America, then,
either it must of necessity have way to pass from Cape Frido through
this frith, westward towards Cathay, being known to come so far only
to salve his former wrongs by the authority before named; or else it
must needs strike over upon the coast of Iceland, Lapland, Finmark,
and Norway (which are east from the said place about three hundred
and sixty leagues) with greater force than it did from the Cape of
Good Hope upon the strait of Magellan, or from the strait of
Magellan to Cape Frido; upon which coasts Jacques Cartier met with
the same, considering the shortness of the cut from the said Cape
Frido to Iceland, Lapland, etc.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 9 of 49
Words from 8229 to 9258
of 50368
