experience is seen otherwhere. Such valleys as are capable to
receive the water, that in the summer time, by the operation of the
sun, descendeth from great abundance of snow, which continually
lieth on the mountains, and hath no passage, sinketh into the earth,
and so vanisheth away, without any runnel above the earth, by which
occasion or continual standing of the said water the earth is opened
and the great frost yieldeth to the force thereof, which in other
places, four or five fathoms within the ground, for lack of the said
moisture, the earth even in the very summer time is frozen, and so
combineth the stones together, that scarcely instruments with great
force can unknit them.

Also, where the water in those valleys can have no such passage
away, by the continuance of time in such order as is before
rehearsed, the yearly descent from the mountains filleth them full,
that at the lowest bank of the same they fall into the next valley,
and so continue as fishing ponds, in summer time full of water, and
in the winter hard frozen, as by scars that remain thereof in summer
may easily be perceived; so that the heat of summer is nothing
comparable or of force to dissolve the extremity of cold that cometh
in winter.

Nevertheless, I am assured, that below the force of the frost,
within the earth, the waters have recourse, and empty themselves out
of sight into the sea, which, through the extremity of the frost,
are constrained to do the same; by which occasion, the earth within
is kept the warmer, and springs have their recourse, which is the
only nutriment of gold and minerals within the same.

There is much to be said of the commodities of these countries,