vouring fire, _omnia devorans et consumens_, will
sooner cover and dry up the vast ocean with sand and ashes. I would examine
the true seat of that terrestrial [3033]paradise, and where Ophir was
whence Solomon did fetch his gold: from Peruana, which some suppose, or
that Aurea Chersonesus, as Dominicus Niger, Arias Montanus, Goropius, and
others will. I would censure all Pliny's, Solinus', Strabo's, Sir John
Mandeville's, Olaus Magnus', Marcus Polus' lies, correct those errors in
navigation, reform cosmographical charts, and rectify longitudes, if it
were possible; not by the compass, as some dream, with Mark Ridley in his
treatise of magnetical bodies, _cap. 43._ for as Cabeus _magnet philos.
lib. 3. cap. 4._ fully resolves, there is no hope thence, yet I would
observe some better means to find them out.

I would have a convenient place to go down with Orpheus, Ulysses, Hercules,
[3034]Lucian's Menippus, at St. Patrick's purgatory, at Trophonius' den,
Hecla in Iceland, Aetna in Sicily, to descend and see what is done in the
bowels of the earth: do stones and metals grow there still? how come fir
trees to be [3035]digged out from tops of hills, as in our mosses, and
marshes all over Europe? How come they to dig up fish bones, shells, beams,
ironworks, many fathoms under ground, and anchors in mountains far remote
from all seas? [3036]Anno 1460 at Bern in Switzerland 50 fathom deep a ship
was digged out of a mountain, where they got metal ore, in which were 48
carcasses of men, with other merchandise. That such things are ordinarily
found in tops of hills, Aristotle insinuates in his meteors,
[3037]Pomponius Mela in his first book, _c. de Numidia_, and familiarly in
the Alps, saith [3038]Blancanus the Jesuit, the like is to be seen: came
this from earthquakes, or from Noah's flood, as Christians suppose, or is
there a vicissitude of sea and land, as Anaximenes held of old, the
mountains of Thessaly would become seas, and seas again mountains? The
whole world belike should be new moulded, when it seemed good to those
all-commanding powers, and turned inside out, as we do haycocks in harvest,
top to bottom, or bottom to top: or as we turn apples to the fire, move the
world upon his centre; that which is under the poles now, should be
translated to the equinoctial, and that which is under the torrid zone to
the circle arctic and antarctic another while, and so be reciprocally
warmed by the sun: or if the worlds be infinite,