Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage

and modern, I came in fine to the fourth part of the world, commonly called America, which by all descriptions I found to be an island environed round about with the sea, having on the south

ea that severeth it from Greenland, through which northern s

g greater than all Africa and Asia, which lay westward from the Straits of Gibraltar, navigable round about: affirming, also,

lus, in his Chronicle of Spain, reporteth that there hath been found by the Spaniards in the gold mines of America certain pieces of money, engra

Commentaries upon Plato), to be overflown, and swallowed up with water, by reason of a mighty earthquake and streaming down of the heavenly flood gates. The like thereof happened unto some part of Italy, when by

owed up with the sea, and are not at this day to be discerned: by which accident America grew to be unknown, of long time, unto us of the later ages, and was latel

me of the people of the south-east parts of the world accounted as nine thousand years; for the manner then w

be parcel of this Atlantis than those western islands, which now bear the name o

hat time swallowed up with water, which could not utterly take away the old deeps and channels, but, rather, be many occasion of the enlarging of the old, and also an enforcing of a great many new; why then should we now doubt of ou

(meaning thereby, as manifestly doth appear, Asia, Africa, and Europe, being all the countries then known) to be but one island, compasse

t of India) Atlanticum Pelagus, and that sea also on the west coasts of Spain and Africa, M

ad name Oceanus Atlanticus, of the same mountain; but that those seas and the mountain Atlas were so called of this great island Atlantis, and that the one and the other had their names for

geographers, as Gemma Frisius, Munsterus, Appianus Hunterus, Gastaldus, Guyccardinus, Michael Tramesinus, Franciscus Demongenitus, Barnardus, Puteanus, Andreas Vavasor, Tramontanus, Petrus Martyr, and also Ortelius, who doth coast out in his general map (set out Anno 1569) a

Cathay, and Greenland, by the which any man of our country that will give the attempt, may with small danger pass to Cathay, the Moluccas, India, and all othe

es have allowed the same; but I conjecture that they would never have so constantly affirmed, or notified their opin

ed, King of Wessex, Anne 871, the words of which discourse were these: "He sailed right north, having always the desert land on the starboard, and on the larboard the main sea, continuing his course, until he perceived that the coast bowed directly towards the east or else the sea opened into the land he could not tell how far, where he was compelled to stay until he had a western wind or somewhat upon the north, and sailed thence directly east along th

tainty to be sea, until it was since discovered by our Englishmen in the time of King Edward I., but thought before that time that Greenland had

ve been thought but simple, considering that this navigation was written so many years past, in so barbarous a tongu

best, both antique and modern geographers, and plainly set out in the best and most allowed maps, charts, globes,