elevation
for the island of Japan, yea, three hundred leagues northerly of Japan,
yet may there be land to hinder the through passage that way by sea, as
in the examples aforesaid it falleth out, Asia and America there being
joined together in one continent. Nor can this opinion seem altogether
frivolous unto any one that diligently peruseth our cosmographers'
doings. Josephus Moletius is of that mind, not only in his plain
hemispheres of the world, but also in his sea-card. The French
geographers in like manner be of the same opinion, as by their map cut
out in form of a heart you may perceive as though the West Indies were
part of Asia, which sentence well agreeth with that old conclusion in the
schools, _Quid-quid praeter Africum et Europam est_, _Asia est_,
"Whatsoever land doth neither appertain unto Africa nor to Europe is part
of Asia."

Furthermore, it were to small purpose to make so long, so painful, so
doubtful a voyage by such a new found way, if in Cathay you should
neither be suffered to land for silks and silver, nor able to fetch the
Molucca spices and pearl for piracy in those seas. Of a law denying all
aliens to enter into China, and forbidding all the inhabiters under a
great penalty to let in any stranger into those countries, shall you read
in the report of Galeotto Petera, there imprisoned with other Portuguese,
as also in the Japanese letters, how for that cause the worthy traveller
Xavierus bargained with a barbarian merchant for a great sum of pepper to
be brought into Canton, a port in Cathay. The great and dangerous piracy
used in those seas no man can be ignorant of that listeth to read the
Japanese and Indian history.

Finally, all this great labour would be lost, all these charges spent in
vain, if in the end our travellers might not be able to return again, and
bring safely home into their own native country that wealth and riches
they in foreign regions with adventure of goods and danger of their lives
have sought for. By the north-east there is no way; the South-East
Passage the Portuguese do hold, as the lords of those seas. At the
south-west, Magellan's experience hath partly taught us, and partly we
are persuaded by reason, how the eastern current striketh so furiously on
that strait, and falleth with such force into that narrow gulf, that
hardly any ship can return that way into our west ocean out of Mare del
Sur. The which, if it be true, as truly it is, then we may say tha