ce_ signifying cold; as, although it has a cloudy and
tempestuous season instead of winter, it is yet never cold, but rather
smothering hot, with hot showers, and such scorching winds, that at
certain times the inhabitants seem as if living in furnaces, and in a
manner half ready for purgatory or hell. According to Gemma Phrisius, in
certain parts of Africa, as in the greater Atlas, the air in the night
is seen shining with many strange fires and flames, rising as it were as
high as the moon, and strange noises are heard in the air, as of pipes,
trumpets, and drums, which are caused perhaps by the vehement motions of
these fiery exhalations, as we see in many experiments wrought by fire,
air, and wind. The hollowness also, and various reflections and
breakings of the clouds, may be great causes thereof, besides the great
coldness of the middle region of the air, by which these fiery
exhalations, when they ascend there, are suddenly driven back with great
force. Daily experience teaches us, by the whizzing of a burning torch,
what a noise fire occasions in the air, and much more so when it strives
and is inclosed with air, as seen in guns; and even when air alone is
inclosed, as in organ pipes and other wind instruments: For wind,
according to philosophers, is nothing but air vehemently moved, as when
propelled by a pair of bellows, and the like.

Some credible persons affirm that, in this voyage to Guinea, they felt a
sensible heat in the night from the beams of the moon; which, though it
seem strange to us who inhabit a cold region, may yet reasonably have
been the case, as Pliny writes that the nature of stars and planets
consists of fire, containing a spirit of life, and cannot therefore be
without heat. That the moon gives heat to the earth seems confirmed by
David, in the 121st psalm, where, speaking of such men as are defended
from evils by the protection of God, he says, "The sun shall not burn
thee by day, neither the moon by night[220]." They said likewise, that
in some parts of the sea they saw streams of water, which they call
_spouts_, falling out of the air into the sea, some of them being as
large as the pillars of churches; insomuch that, when these fall into
ships, they are in great danger of being sunk. Some allege these to be
the cataracts of heaven, which were all opened at Noah's flood: But I
rather consider them to be those fluxions and eruptions said by
Aristotle, in his book de Mundo, to happen in