Because you may understand as well those things alleged against me as
what doth serve for my purpose, I have here added the reasons of Master
Anthony Jenkinson, a worthy gentleman, and a great traveller, who
conceived a better hope of the passage to Cathay from us to be by the
north-east than by the north-west.

He first said that he thought not to the contrary but that there was a
passage by the north-west, according to mime opinion, but he was assured
that there might be found a navigable passage by the north-east from
England to go to all the east parts of the world, which he endeavoured to
prove three ways.

The first was, that he heard a fisherman of Tartary say in hunting the
morse, that he sailed very far towards the south-east, finding no end of
the sea, whereby he hoped a through passage to be that way.

Whereunto I answered that the Tartars were a barbarous people, and
utterly ignorant in the art of navigation, not knowing the use of the
sea-card, compass, or star, which he confessed true; and therefore they
could not (said I) certainly know the south-east from the north-east in a
wide sea, and a place unknown from the sight of the land.

Or if he sailed anything near the shore, yet he, being ignorant, might be
deceived by the doubling of many points and capes, and by the trending of
the land, albeit he kept continually along the shore.

And further, it might be that the poor fisherman through simplicity
thought that there was nothing that way but sea, because he saw mine
land, which proof (under correction) giveth small assurance of a
navigable sea by the north-east to go round about the world, for that he
judged by the eye only, seeing we in this clear air do account twenty
miles a ken at sea.

His second reason is, that there was an unicorn's horn found upon the
coast of Tartary, which could not come (said he) thither by any other
means than with the tides, through some strait in the north-east of the
Frozen Sea, there being no unicorns in any part of Asia, saving in India
and Cathay, which reason, in my simple judgment, has as little force.

First, it is doubtful whether those barbarous Tartars do know an
unicorn's horn, yea or no; and if it were one, yet it is not credible
that the sea could have driven it so far, it being of such nature that it
cannot float.

Also the tides running to and fro would have driven it as far back with
the ebb as it brought it forward with the flood.

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