rewith, if haply it be at any time dissolved, beside bays and shelves,
the water waxing more shallow towards the east, to say nothing of the
foul mists and dark fogs in the cold clime, of the little power of the
sun to clear the air, of the uncomfortable nights, so near the Pole, five
months long.

A fourth way to go unto these aforesaid happy islands, the Moluccas, Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, a learned and valiant knight, discourseth of at large
in his new "Passage to Cathay." The enterprise of itself being virtuous,
the fact must doubtless deserve high praise, and whensoever it shall be
finished the fruits thereof cannot be small; where virtue is guide, there
is fame a follower, and fortune a companion. But the way is dangerous,
the passage doubtful, the voyage not thoroughly known, and therefore
gainsaid by many, after this manner.

First, who can assure us of any passage rather by the north-west than by
the north-east? do not both ways lie in equal distance from the North
Pole? stand not the North Capes of either continent under like elevation?
is not the ocean sea beyond America farther distant from our meridian by
thirty or forty degrees west than the extreme points of Cathay eastward,
if Ortellius' general card of the world be true? In the north-east that
noble knight--Sir Hugh Willoughbie perished for cold, and can you then
promise a passenger any better hap by the north-west, who hath gone for
trial's sake, at any time, this way out of Europe to Cathay?

If you seek the advice herein of such as make profession in cosmography,
Ptolemy, the father of geography, and his eldest children, will answer by
their maps with a negative, concluding most of the sea within the land,
and making an end of the world northward, near the 63rd degree. The same
opinion, when learning chiefly flourished, was received in the Romans'
time, as by their poets' writings it may appear. "Et te colet ultima
Thule," said Virgil, being of opinion that Iceland was the extreme part
of the world habitable toward the north. Joseph Moletius, an Italian,
and Mercator, a German, for knowledge men able to be compared with the
best geographers of our time, the one in his half spheres of the whole
world, the other in some of his great globes, have continued the West
Indies land, even to the North Pole, and consequently cut off all passage
by sea that way.

The same doctors, Mercator in other of his globes and maps, Moletius in
his sea-card, neverthe