be
the circumference filled with water, which will yet be discovered? The
explorers of these coasts offer no convincing explanation. There are
other authors who think that a large strait exists at the extremity
of the gulf formed by this vast continent and which, we have already
said, is eight times larger than the ocean. This strait may lie to the
west of Cuba, and would conduct these raging waters to the west, from
whence they would again return to our east. Some learned men think the
gulf formed by this vast continent is an enclosed sea, whose coasts
bend in a northerly direction behind Cuba, in such wise that the
continent would extend unbrokenly to the northern lands beneath the
polar circle bathed by the glacial sea. The waters, driven back by
the extent of land, are drawn into a circle, as may be seen in rivers
whose opposite banks provoke whirlpools; but this theory does not
accord with the facts. The explorers of the northern passages, who
always sailed westwards, affirm that the waters are always drawn
in that direction, not however with violence, but by a long and
uninterrupted movement.

Amongst the explorers of the glacial region a certain Sebastiano
Cabotto, of Venetian origin, but brought by his parents in his infancy
to England, is cited. It commonly happens that Venetians visit every
part of the universe, for purposes of commerce. Cabotto equipped two
vessels in England, at his own cost, and first sailed with three
hundred men towards the north, to such a distance that he found
numerous masses of floating ice in the middle of the month of July.
Daylight lasted nearly twenty-four hours, and as the ice had melted,
the land was free. According to his story he was obliged to tack and
take the direction of west-by-south. The coast bent to about the
degree of the strait of Gibraltar. Cabotto did not sail westward until
he had arrived abreast of Cuba, which lay on his left. In following
this coast-line which he called Bacallaos,[1] he says that he
recognised the same maritime currents flowing to the west that the
Castilians noted when they sailed in southern regions belonging to
them. It is not merely probable, therefore, but becomes even necessary
to conclude that between these two hitherto unknown continents there
extend large openings through which the water flows from east to west.
I think these waters flow all round the world in a circle, obediently
to the Divine Law, and that they are not spewed forth a