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.
To answer the third objection, besides Cabot and all other travellers' navigations, the only credit of Master Frobisher may suffice, who lately, through all these islands of ice and mountains of snow, passed that way, even beyond the gulf that tumbleth down from the north, and in some places, though he drew one inch thick ice, as he returning in August did, came home safely again.
The fourth argument is altogether frivolous and vain, for neither is there any isthmus or strait of land between America and Asia, nor can these two lands jointly be one continent.The first part of my answer is manifestly allowed by Homer, whom that excellent geographer, Strabo, followeth, yielding him in this faculty the prize.The author of that book likewise On the Universe to Alexander, attributed unto Aristotle, is of the same opinion that Homer and Strabo be of, in two or three places.Dionysius, in his Periegesis, hath this verse, "So doeth the ocean sea run round about the world:" speaking only of Europe, Africa, and Asia, as then Asia was travelled and known.With these doctors may you join Pomponius Mela, Pliny, Pius, in his description of Asia.All the which writers do no less confirm the whole eastern side of Asia to be compassed about with the sea; then Plato doth affirm in is Timaeus, under the name Atlantis, the West Indies to be an island, as in a special discourse thereof R.Eden writeth, agreeable unto the sentence of Proclus, Marsilius Ficinus, and others.Out of Plato it is gathered that America is an island.Homer, Strabo, Aristotle, Dionysius, Mela, Pliny, Pius, affirm the continent of Asia, Africa, and Europe, to be environed with the ocean.I may therefore boldly say (though later intelligences thereof had we none at all) that Asia and the West Indies be not tied together by any isthmus or strait of land, contrary to the opinion of some new cosmographers, by whom doubtfully this matter hath been brought in controversy.
And thus much for the first part of my answer unto the fourth objection.
