TO PROVE BY AUTHORITY A PASSAGE TO BE ON THE NORTH SIDEOF AMERICA, TO GO TO CATHAY AND THE EAST INDIES.
When I gave myself to the study of geography, after I had perused and diligently scanned the descriptions of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and conferred them with the maps and globes both antique and modern, I came in fine to the fourth part of the world, commonly called America, which by all descriptions I found to be an island environed round about with the sea, having on the south side of it the Strait of Magellan, on the west side the Mare de Sur, which sea runneth towards the north, separating it from the east parts of Asia, where the dominions of the Cathaians are.On the east part our west ocean, and on the north side the sea that severeth it from Greenland, through which northern seas the passage lieth, which Itake now in hand to discover.
Plato in his Timaeus and in the dialogue called Critias, discourses of an incomparable great island then called Atlantis, being greater than all Africa and Asia, which lay westward from the Straits of Gibraltar, navigable round about: affirming, also, that the princes of Atlantis did as well enjoy the governance of all Africa and the most part of Europe as of Atlantis itself.
Also to prove Plato's opinion of this island, and the inhabiting of it in ancient time by them of Europe, to be of the more credit:
Marinaeus Siculus, in his Chronicle of Spain, reporteth that there hath been found by the Spaniards in the gold mines of America certain pieces of money, engraved with the image of Augustus Caesar;which pieces were sent to the Pope for a testimony of the matter by John Rufus, Archbishop of Constantinum.
Moreover, this was not only thought of Plato, but by Marsilius Ficinus, an excellent Florentine philosopher, Crantor the Grecian, Proclus, also Philo the famous Jew (as appeareth in his book De Mundo, and in the Commentaries upon Plato), to be overflown, and swallowed up with water, by reason of a mighty earthquake and streaming down of the heavenly flood gates.The like thereof happened unto some part of Italy, when by the forcibleness of the sea, called Superum, it cut off Sicily from the continent of Calabria, as appeareth in Justin in the beginning of his fourth book.Also there chanced the like in Zeeland, a part of Flanders.
And also the cities of Pyrrha and Antissa, about Palus Meotis; and also the city Burys, in the Corinthian Gulf, commonly called Sinus Corinthiacus, have been swallowed up with the sea, and are not at this day to be discerned: by which accident America grew to be unknown, of long time, unto us of the later ages, and was lately discovered again by Americus Vespucius, in the year of our Lord 1497, which some say to have been first discovered by Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, Anno 1492.
The same calamity happened unto this isle of Atlantis six hundred and odd years before Plato's time, which some of the people of the south-east parts of the world accounted as nine thousand years; for the manner then was to reckon the moon's period of the Zodiac for a year, which is our usual month, depending a Luminari minore.
So that in these our days there can no other main or island be found or judged to be parcel of this Atlantis than those western islands, which now bear the name of America; countervailing thereby the name of Atlantis in the knowledge of our age.
Then, if when no part of the said Atlantis was oppressed by water and earthquake, the coasts round about the same were navigable, a far greater hope now remaineth of the same by the north-west, seeing the most part of it was since that time swallowed up with water, which could not utterly take away the old deeps and channels, but, rather, be many occasion of the enlarging of the old, and also an enforcing of a great many new; why then should we now doubt of our North-West Passage and navigation from England to India, etc., seeing that Atlantis, now called America, was ever known to be an island, and in those days navigable round about, which by access of more water could not be diminished?
Also Aristotle in his book De Mundo, and the learned German, Simon Gryneus, in his annotations upon the same, saith that the whole earth (meaning thereby, as manifestly doth appear, Asia, Africa, and Europe, being all the countries then known) to be but one island, compassed about with the reach of the Atlantic sea; which likewise approveth America to be an island, and in no part adjoining to Asia or the rest.
