[Sidenote: A comparison betweene Marochus and England.] The olde writers
perswaded by bare conjecture, went about to determine of those places, by
comparing them to their owne complexions, because they felt them to bee
hardly tolerable to themselues, and so took thereby an argument of the
whole habitable earth; as if a man borne in Marochus, or some other part of
Barbarie, should at the latter end of Sommer vpon the suddeine, either
naked, or with his thinne vesture, bee brought into England, hee would
judge this Region presently not to bee habitable, because hee being brought
vp in so warme a Countrey, is not able here to liue, for so suddeine an
alteration of the colde aire: but if the same man had come at the beginning
of Sommer, and so afterward by little and little by certaine degrees, had
felt and acquainted himselfe with the frost of Autumne, it would haue
seemed by degrees to harden him, and so to make it farre more tollerable,
and by vse after one yeere or two, the aire would seeme to him more
temperate. It was compted a great matter in the olde time, that there was a
brasse pot broken in sunder with frosen water in Pontus, which after was
brought and shewed in Delphis, in token of a miraculous colde region and
winter, and therefore consecrated to the Temple of Apollo.

This effect being wrought in the Parallel of fouretie three degrees in
Latitude, it was presently counted a place very hardly and vneasily to be
inhabited for the great colde. And how then can such men define vpon other
Regions very farre without that Parallel, whether they were inhabited or
not, seeing that in so neere a place they so grossely mistooke the matter,
and others their followers being contented with the inuentions of the olde
Authors, haue persisted willingly in the same opinion, with more confidence
then consideration of the cause: so lightly was that opinion receiued, as
touching the vnhabitable Clime neere and vnder the Poles.