The Great And Dangerous Piracy Used In
Those Seas No Man Can Be Ignorant Of That Listeth To Read The
Japanese And Indian History.
Finally, all this great labour would be lost, all these charges
spent in vain, if in the end our
Travellers might not be able to
return again, and bring safely home into their own native country
that wealth and riches they in foreign regions with adventure of
goods and danger of their lives have sought for. By the north-east
there is no way; the South-East Passage the Portuguese do hold, as
the lords of those seas. At the south-west, Magellan's experience
hath partly taught us, and partly we are persuaded by reason, how
the eastern current striketh so furiously on that strait, and
falleth with such force into that narrow gulf, that hardly any ship
can return that way into our west ocean out of Mare del Sur. The
which, if it be true, as truly it is, then we may say that the
aforesaid eastern current, or Levant course of waters, continually
following after the heavenly motions, loseth not altogether its
force, but is doubled rather by another current from out the north-
east, in the passage between America and the North Land, whither it
is of necessity carried, having none other way to maintain itself in
circular motion, and consequently the force and fury thereof to be
no less in the Strait of Anian, where it striketh south into Mare
del Sur beyond America (if any such strait of sea there be), than in
the strait of Magellan, both straits being of like breadth, as in
Belognine Salterius' table of "New France," and in Don Diego Hermano
de Toledo's card for navigation in that region, we do find precisely
set down.
Nevertheless, to approve that there lieth a way to Cathay at the
north-west from out of Europe, we have experience, namely of three
brethren that went that journey, as Gemma Frisius recordeth, and
left a name unto that strait, whereby now it is called Fretum Trium
Fratrum. We do read again of a Portuguese that passed this strait,
of whom Master Frobisher speaketh, that was imprisoned therefore
many years in Lisbon, to verify the old Spanish proverb, "I suffer
for doing well." Likewise, An. Urdaneta, a friar of Mexico, came
out of Mare del Sur this way into Germany; his card, for he was a
great discoverer, made by his own experience and travel in that
voyage, hath been seen by gentlemen of good credit.
Now if the observation and remembrance of things breedeth
experience, and of experience proceedeth art, and the certain
knowledge we have in all faculties, as the best philosophers that
ever were do affirm truly the voyage of these aforesaid travellers
that have gone out of Europe into Mare del Sur, and returned thence
at the north-west, do most evidently conclude that way to be
navigable, and that passage free; so much the more we are so to
think, for that the first principle and chief ground in all
geography, as Ptolemy saith, is the history of travel, that is,
reports made by travellers skilful in geography and astronomy, of
all such things in their journey as to geography do belong.
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