It Only
Remaineth, That We Now Answer To Those Arguments That Seemed To Make
Against This Former Conclusion.
The first objection is of no force, that general table of the world,
set forth by Ortellius or Mercator,
For it greatly skilleth not,
being unskilfully drawn for that point, as manifestly it may appear
unto any one that compareth the same with Gemma Frisius' universal
map, with his round quartered card, with his globe, with Sebastian
Cabot's table, and Ortellius' general map alone, worthily preferred
in this case before all Mercator's and Ortellius' other doings: for
that Cabot was not only a skilful seaman, but a long traveller, and
such a one as entered personally that strait, sent by King Henry
VII. to make this aforesaid discovery, as in his own discourse of
navigation you may read in his card drawn with his own hand, that
the mouth of the north-western strait lieth near the 318th meridian,
between 61 and 64 degrees in the elevation, continuing the same
breadth about ten degrees west, where it openeth southerly more and
more, until it come under the tropic of Cancer; and so runneth into
Mare del Sur, at the least 18 degrees more in breadth there than it
was where it first began; otherwise I could as well imagine this
passage to be more unlikely than the voyage to Moscovy, and more
impossible than it for the far situation and continuance thereof in
the frosty clime: as now I can affirm it to be very possible and
most likely in comparison thereof, for that it neither coasteth so
far north as the Moscovian passage doth, neither is this strait so
long as that, before it bow down southerly towards the sun again.
The second argument concludeth nothing. 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.
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