es in his Golden
Fleece, is in the same latitude with little Britain in France, and yet
their winter begins not till January, their spring till May; which search
he accounts worthy of an astrologer: is this from the easterly winds, or
melting of ice and snow dissolved within the circle arctic; or that the air
being thick, is longer before it be warm by the sunbeams, and once heated
like an oven will keep itself from cold? Our climes breed lice, [3059]
Hungary and Ireland _male audiunt_ in this kind; come to the Azores, by a
secret virtue of that air they are instantly consumed, and all our European
vermin almost, saith Ortelius. Egypt is watered with Nilus not far from the
sea, and yet there it seldom or never rains: Rhodes, an island of the same
nature, yields not a cloud, and yet our islands ever dropping and inclining
to rain. The Atlantic Ocean is still subject to storms, but in Del Zur, or
_Mare pacifico_, seldom or never any. Is it from tropic stars, _apertio
portarum_, in the dodecotemories or constellations, the moon's mansions,
such aspects of planets, such winds, or dissolving air, or thick air, which
causeth this and the like differences of heat and cold? Bodin relates of a
Portugal ambassador, that coming from [3060]Lisbon to [3061]Danzig in
Spruce, found greater heat there than at any time at home. Don Garcia de
Sylva, legate to Philip III., king of Spain, residing at Ispahan in Persia,
1619, in his letter to the Marquess of Bedmar, makes mention of greater
cold in Ispahan, whose lat. is 31. gr. than ever he felt in Spain, or any
part of Europe. The torrid zone was by our predecessors held to be
uninhabitable, but by our modern travellers found to be most temperate,
bedewed with frequent rains, and moistening showers, the breeze and cooling
blasts in some parts, as [3062]Acosta describes, most pleasant and fertile.
Arica in Chile is by report one of the sweetest places that ever the sun
shined on, _Olympus terrae_, a heaven on earth: how incomparably do some
extol Mexico in Nova Hispania, Peru, Brazil, &c., in some again hard, dry,
sandy, barren, a very desert, and still in the same latitude. Many times we
find great diversity of air in the same [3063]country, by reason of the
site to seas, hills or dales, want of water, nature of soil, and the like:
as in Spain Arragon is _aspera et sicca_, harsh and evil inhabited;
Estremadura is dry, sandy, barren most part, extreme hot by reason of his
plains; Andalusia an