the sea that severeth it from Greenland, through which northern seas the
passage lieth, which I take 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 o