ry: whether
[3005]Presbyter John be in Asia or Africa; M. Polus Venetus puts him in
Asia, [3006]the most received opinion is, that he is emperor of the
Abyssines, which of old was Ethiopia, now Nubia, under the equator in
Africa. Whether [3007]Guinea be an island or part of the continent, or that
hungry [3008]Spaniard's discovery of _Terra Australis Incognita_, or
Magellanica, be as true as that of Mercurius Britannius, or his of Utopia,
or his of Lucinia. And yet in likelihood it may be so, for without all
question it being extended from the tropic of Capricorn to the circle
Antarctic, and lying as it doth in the temperate zone, cannot choose but
yield in time some flourishing kingdoms to succeeding ages, as America did
unto the Spaniards. Shouten and Le Meir have done well in the discovery of
the Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient passage to _Mare
pacificum_: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the
rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that
can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix
described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian
gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus,
whether Herodotus, [3011]Seneca, Plin. _lib. 5. cap. 9._ Strabo. _lib. 5._
give a true cause of his annual flowing, [3012]Pagaphetta discourse rightly
of it, or of Niger and Senegal; examine Cardan, [3013]Scaliger's reasons,
and the rest. Is it from those Etesian winds, or melting of snow in the
mountains under the equator (for Jordan yearly overflows when the snow
melts in Mount Libanus), or from those great dropping perpetual showers
which are so frequent to the inhabitants within the tropics, when the sun
is vertical, and cause such vast inundations in Senegal, Maragnan, Oronoco
and the rest of those great rivers in Zona Torrida, which have all commonly
the same passions at set times: and by good husbandry and policy hereafter
no doubt may come to be as populous, as well tilled, as fruitful, as Egypt
itself or Cauchinthina? I would observe all those motions of the sea, and
from what cause they proceed, from the moon (as the vulgar hold) or earth's
motion, which Galileus, in the fourth dialogue of his system of the world,
so eagerly proves, and firmly demonstrates; or winds, as [3014] some will.
Why in that quiet ocean of Zur, _in mari pacifico_, it is scarce perceived,
in our British seas most violent, in t