But The Way Is Dangerous, The Passage Doubtful, The
Voyage Not Thoroughly Known, And Therefore Gainsaid By Many, After
This Manner.
First, who can assure us of any passage rather by the north-west
than by the north-east?
Do not both ways lie in equal distance from
the North Pole? stand not the North Capes of either continent under
like elevation? is not the ocean sea beyond America farther distant
from our meridian by thirty or forty degrees west than the extreme
points of Cathay eastward, if Ortellius' general card of the world
be true? In the north-east that noble knight - Sir Hugh Willoughbie
perished for cold, and can you then promise a passenger any better
hap by the north-west, who hath gone for trial's sake, at any time,
this way out of Europe to Cathay?
If you seek the advice herein of such as make profession in
cosmography, Ptolemy, the father of geography, and his eldest
children, will answer by their maps with a negative, concluding most
of the sea within the land, and making an end of the world
northward, near the 63rd degree. 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. How shall it be possible for so weak a vessel as a
ship is to hold out amid whole islands, as it were, of ice
continually beating on each side, and at the mouth of that gulf,
issuing down furiously from the north, safely to pass, when whole
mountains of ice and snow shall be tumbled down upon her?
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