United States or Kazakhstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


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.

Homer, Strabo, Aristotle, Dionysius, Mela, Pliny, Pius, affirm the continent of Asia, Africa, and Europe, to be environed with the ocean. And thus much for the first part of my answer unto the fourth objection. Into what gulf do the Moscovian rivers Onega, Dwina, Ob, pour out their streams? northward out of Moscovy into the sea. Which way doth that sea strike?