Chap. 2. [3 in original--KTH]

[Sidenote: Experimented by our English fishers.] First, all seas are
maintained by the abundance of water, so that the neerer the end any Riuer,
Bay, or Hauen is, the shallower it waxeth, (although by some accidentall
barre, it is sometime found otherwise) But the farther you sayle West from
Island towards the place, where this fret is thought to be, the more deepe
are the seas: which giueth vs good hope of continuance of the same Sea with
Mar del Sur, by some fret that lyeth betweene America, Groneland and
Cataia.

2 Also if that America were not an Island, but a part of the continent
adioyning to Asia, either the people which inhabite Mangia, Anian, and
Quinsay, &c. being borderers vpon it, would before this time haue made some
road into it hoping to haue found some like commodities to their owne.

[Sidenote: Neede makes the old wife to trotte.] 3 Or els the Scythians and
Tartarians (which often times heretofore haue sought farre and neere for
new seats, driuen therevnto through the necessitie of their cold and
miserable countreys) would in all this time haue found the way to America,
and entred the same, had the passages bene neuer so straite or difficult;
the countrey being so temperate pleasant and fruitfull, in comparison of
their owne. But there was neuer any such people found there by any of the
Spaniards, Portugals, or Frenchmen, who first discouered the Inland of that
countrey: which Spaniards or Frenchmen must then of necessitie haue seene
some one ciuil man in America, considering how full of ciuill people Asia
is; But they neuer saw so much as one token or signe, that euer any man of
the knowen part of the world had bene there.

4 Furthermore it is to be thought, that if by reason of mountaines, or