Nevertheless if any man should have taken this voyage in hand by the
encouragement of this only author, he should have been thought but
simple, considering that this navigation was written so many years
past, in so barbarous a tongue by one only obscure author, and yet
we in these our days find by our own experiences his former reports
to be true.

How much more, then, ought we to believe this passage to Cathay to
be, being verified by the opinions of all the best, both antique and
modern geographers, and plainly set out in the best and most allowed
maps, charts, globes, cosmographical tables, and discourses of this
our age and by the rest not denied, but left as a matter doubtful.



CHAPTER II.



1. All seas are maintained by the abundance of water, so that the
nearer the end any river, bay, or haven is, the shallower it waxeth
(although by some accidental bar it is sometime found otherwise),
but the farther you sail west from Iceland, towards the place where
this strait is thought to be, the more deep are the seas, which
giveth us good hope of continuance of the same sea, with Mare del
Sur, by some strait that lieth between America, Greenland, and
Cathay.

2. Also, if that America were not an island, but a part of the