t said, the seas do strike from the northern lands
southerly. Violently the seas are tossed and troubled divers ways with
the winds, increased and diminished by the course of the moon, hoisted up
and down through the sundry operations of the sun and the stars: finally,
some be of opinion that the seas be carried in part violently about the
world, after the daily motion of the highest movable heaven, in like
manner as the elements of air and fire, with the rest of the heavenly
spheres, are from the east unto the west. And this they do call their
eastern current, or Levant stream. Some such current may not be denied
to be of great force in the hot zone, for the nearness thereof unto the
centre of the sun, and blustering eastern winds violently driving the
seas westward; howbeit in the temperate climes the sun being farther off,
and the winds more diverse, blowing as much from the north, the west, and
south, as from the east, this rule doth not effectually withhold us from
travelling eastwards, neither be we kept ever back by the aforesaid
Levant winds and stream. But in Magellan strait we are violently driven
back westward, ergo through the north-western strait or Anian frith shall
we not be able to return eastward: it followeth not. The first, for that
the north-western strait hath more sea room at the least by one hundred
English miles than Magellan's strait hath, the only want whereof causeth
all narrow passages generally to be most violent. So would I say in the
Anian Gulf, if it were so narrow as Don Diego and Zalterius have painted
it out, any return that way to be full of difficulties, in respect of
such straitness thereof, not for the nearness of the sun or eastern
winds, violently forcing that way any Levant stream; but in that place
there is more sea room by many degrees, if the cards of Cabot and Gemma
Frisius, and that which Tramezine imprinted, be true.

And hitherto reasons see I none at all, but that I may as well give
credit unto their doings as to any of the rest. It must be
_Peregrinationis historia_, that is, true reports of skilful travellers,
as Ptolemy writeth, that in such controversies of geography must put us
out of doubt. Ortellius, in his universal tables, in his particular maps
of the West Indies, of all Asia, of the northern kingdoms, of the East
Indies; Mercator in some of his globes and general maps of the world,
Moletius in his universal table of the Globe divided, in his sea-card and