me extraordinary means, that one is separated
from another, which is discordant from all other quarries.

There are no rivers or running springs, but such as through the heat of
the sun, with such water as descendeth from the mountains and hills,
whereon great drifts of snow do lie, are engendered.

It argueth also that there should be none; for that the earth, which with
the extremity of the winter is so frozen within, that that water which
should have recourse within the same to maintain springs hath not his
motion, whereof great waters have their origin, as by experience is seen
otherwhere. Such valleys as are capable to receive the water, that in
the summer time, by the operation of the sun, descendeth from great
abundance of snow, which continually lieth on the mountains, and hath no
passage, sinketh into the earth, and so vanisheth away, without any
runnel above the earth, by which occasion or continual standing of the
said water the earth is opened and the great frost yieldeth to the force
thereof, which in other places, four or five fathoms within the ground,
for lack of the said moisture, the earth even in the very summer time is
frozen, and so combineth the stones together, that scarcely instruments
with great force can unknit them.

Also, where the water in those valleys can have no such passage away, by
the continuance of time in such order as is before rehearsed, the yearly
descent from the mountains filleth them full, that at the lowest bank of
the same they fall into the next valley, and so continue as fishing
ponds, in summer time full of water, and in the winter hard frozen, as by
scars that remain thereof in summer may easily be perceived; so that the
heat of summer is nothing comparable or of force to dissolve the
extremity of cold that cometh in winter.

Nevertheless, I am assured, that below the force of the frost, within the
earth, the waters have recourse, and empty themselves out of sight into
the sea, which, through the extremity of the frost, are constrained to do
the same; by which occasion, the earth within is kept the warmer, and
springs have their recourse, which is the only nutriment of gold and
minerals within the same.

There is much to be said of the commodities of these countries, which are
couched within the bowels of the earth, which I let pass till more
perfect trial be made thereof.

Thus conjecturing, till time, with the earnest industry of our general
and others (who, by a