[Sidenote: Ob. 6.] Finally, all this great labour would be lost, all these
charges spent in vaine, if in the ende our trauellers might not be able to
returne againe, and bring safely home into their owne natiue countrey that
wealth and riches, which they in forrein regions with aduenture of goods,
and danger of their liues haue sought for. By the Northeast there is no
way, the Southeast passage the Portugals doe hold as the Lords of those
Seas. At the Southwest Magellans experience hath partly taught vs, and
partly we are persuaded by reason, how the Easterne current striketh so
furiously on that straight, and falleth with such force into that narrow
gulph, that hardly any ship can returne that way into our West Ocean out of
Mar del Zur. The which if it be true, as truly it is, then wee may say that
the aforesayd Easterne current or leuant course of waters continually
following after the heauenly motions, loseth not altogether his force, but
is doubled rather by an other current from out the Northeast, in the
passage betweene America and the North land, whither it is of necessity
caryed: hauing none other way to maintaine it selfe in circular motion, and
consequently the force and fury thereof to be no lesse in the straight of
Anian, where it striketh South into Mar del Zur, beyond America (if any
such straight of Sea there be) then in Magellans fret, both straights being
of like bredth: as in Belognine Zalterius table of new France, and in Don
Diego Hermano de Toledo his Card for nauigation in that region we doe finde
precisely set downe.

Neuerthelesse to approue that there lyeth a way to Cathayo at the Northwest
from out of Europe, we haue experience, namely of three brethren that went
that iourney, as Gemma Frisius recordeth, and left a name vnto that
straight, whereby now it is called Fretum trium fratrum. We doe reade
againe of a Portugall that passed this straight, of whom Master Frobisher
speaketh, that was imprisoned therefore many yeeres in Lisbone, to verifie